Hope, Strength, Faith, Forgiveness, LoveThe Seven Last Words spoken by Jesus from the Cross have always been a special focus for Passionist Spirituality. In them Jesus speaks from the Cross words of hope, of strength of faith, of forgiveness and of love. Besides being words of power they are words of example on how to follow Christ Crucified.
The first word given to us is forgiveness. Forgiveness comes before the crucifixion, before the insults and death. Forgiveness is always first. Maybe we could not cope with listening to the Passion of Christ it we did not begin with forgiveness.
Lord Jesus, you looked down from the cross at those who had beaten you, laughed at you, cursed you, and you saw the terrible eyes of your enemies watching, waiting for you to die. Yet beyond the hatred, beyond the violence, of those desperate men and women you saw your Father’s love for them. And you responded in love and said: “Father, forgive them; they do not know that they are doing.”
Lord Jesus when my enemies are watching, waiting for me to fall let me not be blinded by pain and anger so much that I can no longer love them. Give me resurrection eyes that I might see even my enemies as our merciful Father sees them.
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other as well. Love your enemies and do good to them, then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:27-36)
It is usual for crucified persons to speak while hanging on the cross, but their words usually consisted of wild expressions of pain and pleading for release. They would shriek and curse and spit at their spectators. But here was Jesus, suffering untold agony and dying a shameful death. He didn’t cry out for pity nor did he curse his crucifiers. There was no plea for release, but instead, a prayer for all his enemies. Jesus prayed for those who condemned him and nailed him to the cross.
Has someone hurt your feelings in some way? Can you pray for that person?
Lord Jesus, those you loved wished to crush all hope from you leaving you hanging between despair and desolation. And yet it is hope that you offered to the one crucified beside you. “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom” – your kingdom of peace, amid the storms of life beyond all deaths. Remember me Jesus and give me a resurrection hope, a hope beyond all hope so that I may share it with those who are filled with despair.
Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you have me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me. (Matthew 25:34-36)
On the other side of Jesus, on crosses lifted to the sky, hung two thieves. These two were guilty men. The two malefactors hung there for a while in silence, but they were unable to turn away their eyes from the man who was weltering by their side. At length, one of the thieves began to speak. He joined in the blasphemous speeches that were rising from the crowd below, and said to the man in the crown of thorns, “If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us.”
The second thief acknowledged that Jesus had “done nothing amiss,” and that they indeed deserved their punishment, “for we receive the due reward for our deeds.” And then the second thief humbly and devoutly said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus says not only will I remember you but I will take you to a land where you will never suffer again, and where all your troubles and tears will be gone forever! I will take you to Paradise. The dying thief receives words of assurance.
It never says in the Gospel that the two people on either side of Jesus are thieves, only that they are wrongdoers. But the tradition is wise to call him the “good thief.” It is a good description. He knows how to get hold of what is not his. He pulls off the most amazing coup in history. He gets Paradise without paying for it. As do we all. We just have to learn how to accept gifts.
Lord Jesus you were brought out of the city a dangerous enemy they said, “You are not one of us. You do not belong here, be crucified!” You answered them, “This is your son … this is your mother.” You said to them and you say to us – be a family, be a gift to each other, be one as the Father and I are one.
Jesus let me welcome others as your gift to me. Remove all fears from my heart and make it a home for all those who have no home. Turn all those I fear and push away into brothers and sisters. Give me a resurrection heart that I may love as you love. May I always offer words of comfort to others.
I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:20-24)
While the crowd mocked and jeered, it is good to know that there were those present who really cared. Jesus looked down and saw his mother standing near the Cross. By her side was the disciple John. This little group of friends furnished a striking contrast to the rest of the mocking crowd.
Try and read the thoughts and actions of Jesus’ mother’s heart. His disciples had deserted him, his friends had forsaken him, his nation had rejected him; and his enemies cried out for his blood. But his faithful mother stood there sorrowing at the foot of the Cross. Surely those nails pierced her heart just as much as they pierced his body.
Jesus, who found his purpose and strength in the presence of God, who was sustained by the immediacy of his relationship with God and who endured all by the tangible power of God always at work within him, always a center of vitality and peace, found himself totally alone on the cross.
Jesus, whose very being was God, found himself utterly, absolutely, despairingly, cut off from all that gives life and breath, cut off from all that gives purpose and hope, cut off from the source of his ebbing, cut off, even from himself plumbing the depths of the human condition, to walk in the place of the utter absence of God, in the place of sinners, in the place of those who reject God.
What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: “For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, or life, nor angels, nor principalities, not present things, not future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)
Few of us will ever have to endure such utter desolation, but there may have been moments when we feared to be swallowed by the void, and when our lives appeared to be without sense or meaning, because God had gone. It such times proofs of the existence of God are no great help. Words do not help much.
These terrible words of Jesus are a quotation from Psalm 22. Someone several hundreds of years earlier had been in anguish and he or she wrote these words down. Now Jesus takes these words and he makes them his own. He embraces the experience of desolation and shares it. Even the experience of the absence of God is somehow brought within God’s own life.
Someone may ask us: “Why? Why? Where is God now?” And we may be terrified by finding that we have nothing to say. All the pious words that come to our lips sound worse than empty. Then all that we can do is to be there, and trust that God is there too.
Jesus you thirst to give me your love and for my love in return. Lord Jesus, let me enter more deeply into your love. Let me understand that I cannot give without receiving nor receive without giving. Quench my thirst for your love, O Lord, by sending me those who need to be loved and give me a resurrection love that I may love them as you do.
Jesus stood up and exclaimed, “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture says, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within them’” (John 7:37-38).
Thirst is a very fundamental experience. I have only been thirsty once, walking in the desert from Jerusalem to Jericho. After a while we began to feel disorientated, almost disembodied. One of our companions did go slightly crazy with thirst but for those who face suffering it is often the climax of their trials.
Brian Keenan, in his hell hole in Beirut, longs for words and for water: “I must ration my drinking water for I am always fearful that I might finish it and then wake in the middle of the night with a raging thirst that I cannot satiate. I think of rabies and the raging thirst of mad dogs and I know how easy it would be to go mad from thirst. Now I know the full meaning of the expression so frequently used in our daily lives: ‘He was mad with thirst.’” (An Evil Cradling, p. 63).
Why it is that thirst for water is so fundamental? Maybe it is because our bodies are 98 per cent water. Dehydration is the seeping away of our very being, our substance. We feel that we ourselves are evaporating. So often the last desire of those who are dying is for something to drink. It also stands for that deepest thirst for the one who gives us substance and being at every moment and who promises eternal life: “Oh God, you are my God for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you, like a dry weary land without water.” (Psalm 62)
There is a kind of timelessness about hanging on the cross. It is not a quiet death, over in an instant to one glorious moment of martyrdom like being torn apart by lions. A cross is as much an instrument of torture as it is a gallows from which to hang. And as the day wears on seconds stretch into minutes which stretch into hours until there comes a point when time can no longer be measured except in the gradual weakening of the body and its ever more insistent demands for the substance which is so vital to life, so foundational to all living things, so basic to existence as we know it – water.
Water to moisten the parched mouth, water to free a swollen tongue, water to open a rasping throat that cannot gasp enough air, water to keep hope alive, to keep life alive just a few moments longer. Water, to a crucified man, is life.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:14-17)
The solders give Jesus what they have, some sour old vinegar. It probably tasted disgusting but it is what poor soldiers drank and so they shared it. They could not afford decent wine. Jesus accepts what they have to offer. At the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus asked the disciples what they had to give to the crowd, and they reply, “Just five loaves and two fish.” It is not much. It is all that they have and so it is enough. Faced with our hungry world, with millions who are starving, we may not feel that we have much to give. If we give what we have, then it will be enough.
It is the end, the very end, the end of the ordeal and Jesus alone on the cross, tortured, exhausted, abandoned by his friends, forsaken by God gasps for the last breath and gathers the strength for one final cry. Why would he choose to speak so close to the end? Why would he muster the last energy he had to cry out with a loud voice? Couldn’t God have heard his thoughts? A dedication made despite the pain, despite the mocking, despite the agony, despite the sense of horrible aloneness he felt. Jesus entrusts his spirit, his life, to God in faith, even at the point of his own abandonment when the good seems so very far away he proclaims his faith in God, the darkness cannot overcome it.
For I will take you away from among the nations, gather you from all the foreign lands, and bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving them natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your fathers; you shall be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:24-29)
We live in an age of profound anxiety. We are fearful about disease and illness, about our futures, about our children, about our jobs, about failure, about death. We suffer from a deep insecurity, a collapse of trust. This is strange because we are far more protected and safe than any previous generation of human history, at least in the West. We have better medicine, safer transport; we are more protected from the climate, have better social security. And yet we are more afraid. Take a moment to think of all that you most fear. For me might it be the shame of public humiliation? Or, a painful death? Or, seeing the early death of someone that you love? We can take every possible precaution to avoid these disasters. We can take out all the insurance policies in the world, live healthy lives, go to the gym, and never catch airplanes, have check ups and give up smoking. But what we most fear may still happen. Jesus invites us not to be afraid.
