The Passion (The Creed)

For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,

he suffered death and was buried.

Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote that Jesus Christ was the only man born to die.  The beauty of his birth was marred by the massacre of the infants by Herod. The happiness of his mother was overshadowed by Simeon's prophecy, "and thy own soul a sword shall pierce." (Luke 2:35)

The Son was not made Incarnate to establish an earthly kingdom or simply add to the work of the prophets. He was not merely another Elijah or John the Baptist. Jesus came to fulfill the law and establish a new and lasting covenant - "and this is to them my covenant: when I shall take away their sins." (Romans 11:27) This was not an impersonal contract. The Passion established a relationship built upon love between God and His people.

After coming down from Mount Sinai, Moses had his priests sacrifice to the Lord. He took a bowl of the blood from the victims "and sprinkled it upon the people, and he said 'This is the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.'" (Exodus 24:8) Then Moses ascended Sinai once more and received the Ten Commandments, the Law.

The covenant of the Old Testament required the blood of sacrificial victims. Therefore it is fitting that the new covenant require the same. But this time, instead of calves, the victim is the Son of God Himself. A strong King might be able to sacrifice his servants for the good of the Kingdom. He might even be able to sacrifice his friends. But what King would be able to give up his only son, his own blood, for his people? For our sake?

For our sake, Christ yielded Himself to a humiliating death. He died in the most painful way the brutal Romans could devise. Isaiah the prophet describes Christ's noble sacrifice most beautifully.

"Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity, and his look was as if it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not.... He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth."  - Isaiah 53:4,7

Why? Why would the God who made heaven and earth die such an inglorious death? Why would He submit Himself so humbly to the whip and the jeering and the nails?

Because He loves us. Because He wanted to save us from our sins. When He came before the chief priests and the council, they shouted "He deserves to die!" (Matthew 26:66)

But that is not true. He did not deserve to die. As He was without the blemish of sin, there was nothing that justified His execution, no crime He could be convicted of. The truth of it is, we deserve to die. How many times have we fallen? Again and again we succumb to the easy lure of sin and its wages. Look at the world. Look at your own heart. The weight of sin is immense. But Jesus bore that weight on the Cross for us as He struggled for every breath. The blood of the Lamb stormed the pit of hell and thrust open the gates of heaven so that we might be saved. By His passion, though our "sins be as scarlet, they will be made as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18)

In dying, Christ showed us how to live. With love. In "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ," Anna Catherine Emmerich wrote that in the Garden, Christ could see the sum of human sinfulness, past, present, and future. He gazed upon every blasphemy, every infidelity, and every act of hatred. And yet His love is so great that He nevertheless accepted the slow and tortuous death on a Cross.

In these days leading up to the Passion, meditate upon this. The outstretched and pierced arms of Christ embraced humanity in our dirty, ugly sinfulness. Remember that the Truth was not meant to fall upon the idle and inactive! Make this Truth a part of your life. Jesus showed us how to love unconditionally, to love without counting the cost. He forgave those men who were even then mocking him and hurting His most blessed Body. Ask yourselves, how can I live out this same love?

The world is mired in sinfulness and injustice. As Christians, doers and hearers of the Word, we are called to bring the light of love to this culture of darkness. May the Body of Christ save us and the Blood of Christ sanctify us as we strive to follow the bloodied footsteps of our Lord as He mounted Cavalry and saved the world.


DEUS VOLT!

The Incarnation (The Creed)

For us men and for our salvation

he came down from heaven,

and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,

and became man.

The Incarnation is the second most beautiful moment in history, only surpassed by the Passion. How wondrous a moment! In the words of one of my favorite songs, "heaven meets earth like a passionate kiss." The seen and the unseen collided when God "became man." This is the truth: Jesus Christ, while fully God, became fully man. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:14)

It is all too easy to overlook this Mystery and simply accept it. This is a revolutionary Truth! God condescended to our human nature. The God who made the Universe, who is the source of all light and grace, assumed the weakness of human flesh. For Jesus was indeed "tempted in all things like we are, without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)

The reality is not just counter-intuitive, it is scandalous. Who would believe that God would become man? The Greeks let their false gods masquerade as men, but they never accepted the weakness of humanity. Even in the Old Testament, God appeared to His chosen people, but always in a supernatural way. He was manifest in a burning bush, a pillar of cloud and flame. He sent messengers to Abraham, Jacob, Joshua, and Tobit. But He never appeared to the Jews in the incarnate form of man.

Then everything changed. The Angel Gabriel appeared to a lowly maiden in Nazareth who was betrothed to a man named Joseph. He said to her "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." (Luke  1:28) Angels are superior in nature to mortal men. But Gabriel did not begin by trumpeting his own greatness or even the greatness of the One who sent him. Gabriel greeted Mary as one who is humbled in the presence of grace.

And this was rightly so. For Mary is indeed blessed among women. The only human being besides Christ to be born without the blemish of original sin was Mary. She was perfected to bear the Perfect One. "New wine must be put into new bottles." (Luke 5:38) That is why Mary deserves so much laud and honor, deserves to have angels hail her, because of her Divine Son.

Jesus came into the world. The King of Creation came down to earth and assumed flesh, not in the manner of one changing clothes or putting on a disguise, but fundamentally so. The Lord took on our weakness to temptation, our capacity for pain, confusion, anger, and sadness.

And Jesus did not enter the world as we would think a king ought to have. He was not born in a palace. He did not have servants fulfilling his every need or soldiers watching over him. We would expect God to come down to earth as He did in the Old Testament, with fire and thunder. We would expect Him to be borne down on a chariot of flame, flanked by a celestial retinue. He "should" have been born in the company of "great" men: Alexander or Aristotle, Shakespeare or Socrates or Confucius. He "should" have been born into an "advanced" age like our own, where He could have used radio and television and the Internet to spread His message across the seas, around the globe.

But that didn't happen. Christ entered the world in a way that was just as humble as the nature that he condescended to take. Instead of a palace, a manger. Instead of servants, cows. Instead of royalty and philosophers, dirty shepherds. Instead of protecting Him, soldiers tried to kill Him.

Jesus was born in an age before even the printing press. He was born in a remote corner of the world, Bethlehem in the modern day West Bank, far from the gilded halls of Rome.

God does not make mistakes. Jesus was not born in so lowly a time and so lowly a place on accident, just as His Passion was not a fluke. Jesus came into the world "for us men and for our salvation." Intentionally.

What is more beautiful? What is more humbling? For love of us, the God who created the universe became fully man. The Son became the child of a virgin. He spent thirty three years during which he felt pain, loss, anger, and joy. God-made-man was scourged and killed. He was brought to wrath by the defilers of His temple. His heart was consoled by the sight of the children who came to him. One of the most poignant lines in the Gospels comes when Lazarus died. Our Lord came to the tomb, "and Jesus wept." (John 35:11)

True God and True man. Jesus loves us so much that he endured the ignominy of an anonymous life. He was born in the most humble of circumstances. His surrogate father, St. Joseph, nearly divorced His Most Blessed Mother because she conceived by the Holy Spirit without knowing man.

Christ came to Earth to save us from sin. He is the only man born to die. (Fulton Sheen) The Word-made-flesh lived among men and in so doing, gives us "a concrete vision of triune life." (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer)

This is our belief. Our God is not a cruel God. He does not hide His face from the ranks of men, He gave His face human likeness. Blessed be the Incarnate Son of God, True God and True Man!

Deus Vult!