At the foot of the cross

Gospel Reflection

Today is Friday of the Passion of Christ and we heard in our readings God's overflowing love for us; that because of thia live, he has given us his only son to make his own our sins and our sinfulness.

In our first reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, we heard the fourth song of the suffering servant. 

The prophet said that people marveled at him because even when he spat on, buffeted, abused, violated, and his body no longer recognizable as human because of the extreme  whipping and slashing, he remained quiet, giving himself to such intense suffering.

He endured the suffering, the pain caused by our sinfulness.

In enduring his suffering we become whole, we are healed from our sinfulness. Because of this, he is God's most loved.

He knows that he is loved by God and that is why he was able to endure the torture, the pain, all these suffering, so says the singer of the Psalms we heard today.

God is his refuge, God is his salvation, God is his redeemer. 

God is our redeemer, he will not abandon us.

And that is what St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Hebrews, that we have a High Priest who will intercede for us with the Father.

An intercessor who is no different from us for he too suffered from our weaknesses, he too experienced our pains and even more. And in his suffering, in enduring the pains he experienced,  he learned to be faithful to the Father and he became perfect and a spring of our eternal salvation. 

And that is why today we are invited to stand at the foot of the cross together with Mary and the Beloved Disciple, and to receive the overflowing love of God. The blood that flows from the wounds he bore for us, for our sins, that we be made whole again, that we may reconcile with the Father, and for us to be able to go near and close to the Father, that we may experience His warm embrace. 

In the cross of Jesus we reminded that all the trials that we are going through, all the difficulties we are experiencing, the cross that we are carrying is not just for us to experience hardship, but for us to learn to give ourselves to the Father and say, "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit." I know that you will not abandon me, you have not abandoned me. 

In our death on our cross, is the fulfillment of God's will in our lives that we may experience our resurrection in Him, in our Father. 

May we learn to accept God's love that flows through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the cross that we carry, may we be springs of God's love for others.

Photo by Alicia Quan | Unsplash