Passion Sunday
In today’s Gospel we hear Our Blessed Lord point out to the Pharisees the main reason they do not understand what He has been trying to tell them. He who is of God hears the words of God; therefore you hear them not because you are not of God (Jn 8:47). They heard them but did not understand them because they did not want to.
Those words apply not only to the Pharisees but to anyone who might hear the word of God without understanding it. In every age, there have been those who refuse the message of Our Lord. One of the main reasons given is that it is not what we are used to. We have our habits and do not want someone changing our ways; the Pharisees are the classic example of this. Another is that we simply don’t want to have to do what the teaching involves: the libertarians in every age fall into this category (“If I believe this stuff, I’ll have to stop cheating and drinking and sleeping around–Oh the horror!”). Another reason quite prominent nowadays is that the message does not make sense to us, so we dismiss it as not being in conformity with our perceived dignity. Modern psychology departments are full of people ready to justify any sort of behaviour on these grounds. Another issue is the social pressure of politics. Almost any film you watch about the Passion of Our Lord can’t refrain from viewing the entire history of the Passion from a political perspective. Of course, politics were involved, as they are in all human affairs, but to make Judas or Pilate or Caiaphas victims of a system they could not change and so absolve them of their guilt is, at the end of the day, a shameless effort to absolve anyone and everyone from any sort of crime. It is also to ignore the clear word of Our Lord about Judas: It were better for him if he had never been born (Mt 26:24).
St Paul gives us a key to understanding the real problem when he writes to the Corinthians: the word of the cross, to them that perish, is foolishness: but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God (1 Cor 1:18). In most modern translations, the word as been translated as the “message”, the “story”, the “teaching”, the “speech”, etc. This is unfortunate because the word refers us back to today’s Gospel and Our Lord Himself, who is the Word. He who is of God hears the words of God; therefore you hear them not because you are not of God (Jn 8:47).
The Word of the Cross is the word God speaks to the world from the cross. When God sent His Son into the world, He sent Him to suffer and to die on a cross. That is the Word of the Cross that is folly for those who are on their way to damnation. They do not understand it. Why? Because they do not want to. At the end of the day, it boils down to this verse of the Imitation of Christ: In moriendo totum iacet – all things consist in dying. Ever since the Fall of our first parents when they refused the life God wanted to give them, human existence has been a desperate grasp for a miserable life in this world which never satisfies and a rejection of all forms of suffering that we have deserved for our sins. In other words, we should logically seek to suffer, for that is what we deserve, but we most often seek pleasure, which only makes us miserable and increases the suffering we will have later. The Word of the Cross is so simple and so clear, too clear for many. It is that word which St Paul says elsewhere is living and effectual and more piercing than any two edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow: and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb 4:12).
And he goes on: Seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. The Jews require signs: and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified: unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men: and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor 1:19-25). And the whole passage is preceded by a phrase that underpins it: For Christ sent me… to preach the gospel: not in wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ should be made void (1Co 1:17).
In other words, if we seek to make the Christian message palatable to worldlings of any age, if we seek to dress it up in the costume of any given period of time, and if we seek to edulcorate it so that it becomes soft and easy and nice as is so often the case today, then we make it void. To not preach the reality of the word of the cross is to make it void, that is to say, to annul it, to pretend it never happened. And that is one of the most heinous crimes ever committed because it is the distortion of the message of God Himself.
In today’s Gospel, the Pharisees are so enraged by Our Lord’s clear teaching and affirmation of His divinity that they seek to stone Him to death. This often happens with those who speak the truth clearly. They become embroiled in criticism and controversy because they refuse to play with the truth.
Like Our Blessed Lord, we must hide ourselves and go out of the temple. This means that, especially during Passiontide, we must hide ourselves in His Precious wounds by frequent contemplation of His bitter Passion. But we must also go out of the temple, meaning away from the hustle and bustle of daily life, making for ourselves moments and places of recollection where, with Mother Mary, we can contemplate the central event of human history.
Leave aside the politics, leave aside the modern exegetes who leave hardly anything in the Bible but its cover, leave aside the modern heresies that seek to imagine some cosmic victory of Christ in which we are all taking part just by the fact of being human. Come down to earth, and remember with all the saints that the Lord suffered for our sins and that He expects us to take our part in the cross by faithfully fulfilling our daily duties, bearing with the sufferings that come our way, patiently enduring what human nature so abhors.
Speaking of the saints, let’s conclude with these inspiring words from St Louis de Montfort’s Letter to the Friends of the Cross:
“A Friend of the Cross is a mighty king, a hero who triumphs over the devil, the world and the flesh and their three-fold concupiscence. He overthrows the pride of Satan by his love for humiliation, he triumphs over the world’s greed by his love for poverty and he restrains the sensuality of the flesh by his love for suffering. A Friend of the Cross is a holy man, separated from visible things. His heart is lifted high above all that is frail and perishable; his conversation is in Heaven (Ph 3:20); he journeys here below like a stranger and a pilgrim. He keeps his heart free from the world, looks upon it with an unconcerned glance of his left eye and disdainfully tramples it under foot. A Friend of the Cross is a trophy which the crucified Christ won on Calvary, in union with His Blessed Mother. He is another Benoni or Benjamin (cf. Gn 35:18), a son of sorrow, a son of the right hand. Conceived in the sorrowful heart of Christ, he comes into this world through the gash in the Saviour’s right side and is all empurpled in His blood. True to this heritage, he breathes forth only crosses and blood, death to the world, the flesh and sin and hides himself here below with Jesus Christ in God (cf Col 3:3). Thus, a perfect Friend of the Cross is a true Christ-bearer, or rather another Christ, so that he can say with truth: I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal 2:20).
So, my dear friends, if we want to become a Friend of the Cross, we have our way of life cut out for us. All we have to do is glance up frequently at the crucifix and hide ourselves in the sacred wounds, and little by little, not only will the world lose all relish for us, but we will even draw others to do the same. Then we will have found paradise on earth, and one day, the unending Pasha, the eternal paradise, will open wide its gates for us and for those we have brought along.
