This acclamation is familiar to those who attend the Good Friday Stations or Way of the Cross. Today we come and the starkest reminder of how important the sacrifice on Calvary is, is the fact that we do not celebrate Mass today. Every day, wherever there is a Catholic Church, and the Church is staffed by a priest/s, then the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, the Mass, is re-enacted except for today.
There is no beauty about Him, nothing to attract us to Him. Yet, for our sake He was bruised. For our sins He was crucified. Thus today is an invitation to reflect on love and the call to repentance.
God’s benevolence is immense. The entire season of Lent is basically a display of God’s outpouring love for us. But there is a subtle movement. There is a rhythm which is not focused entirely on contrition or remorse. Rather it is a clarion call to repentance because contrition and conversion are two sides of a coin. Change is integral to repentance.
But for some reasons the world has developed some forms of addiction towards victimhood. We have been hurting for a longest time, a hurt that arises from being unloved. Mother Teresa’s description of poverty somewhat fits our generation pretty well. She said that loneliness is the most severe form of poverty and suffering. We are a generation hurting from the loneliness of being unloved. We crave for love.
Therefore it is not surprising that the last 50 years we have the greatest explosion of self-help therapy and its attendant sister, self-love and in a way the biblical story that best epitomises this need for self-esteem is the Prodigal Son. There you have in the parable, an irresponsible son and a helplessly loving father.
God is loving, ever ready to forgive. That is true. But coupled with self-help, self-esteem and self-love, the loving nature of God has become, instead of a grace toward change, is now more of an entitlement. Does it now make sense that we often miss the proper movement of Lent. It starts off with remorse because we have offended God’s majesty and it ends with a growing appreciation of God’s generous love. Appreciation of God’s love is demonstrated by our penitential behaviour. That is the meaning of repentance.
I repent of my sins for having offended you, my God. Today we witness how Christ opened up His Heart to an outpouring of love for a humanity, that blinded by a sense of entitlement, is incapable of fathoming the depth of His mercy.
If the idea of a God who is vengeful, exacting His pound of flesh as justice for offending Him is unacceptable to a modern audience, perhaps our idea of a God who is ever merciful and who overlooks all our sins is a caricature of our sick psychology. We crave love minus the hard work of tough love. As St Augustine pointed out, the God who created us without our permission, cannot save us without our permission. That means with our cooperation and our desire to work with God’s grace. There is a balance here between the God who loves and our appropriate response, between mercy and justice. You may have heard of this: mercy without justice deteriorates into indulgence whereas justice without mercy hardens into cruelty.
Our unloved age will never fully appreciate God’s mercy unless we recover a sense of sin. Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross would basically be meaningless without an appreciation of the cost of salvation. Could God have saved us without shedding a drop of blood? Definitely. But our experience have shown us that what we gain without sacrifice is often what we care least for. Any achievement without pain or dying to oneself is cheap. We all want victory but any win without a vanquish is pyrrhic or vacuous. It feels like we have won but for nothing. It may explain why lottery winners often squander away their easy gotten gains.
The objective today is not to beat ourselves but to look at Him, all bloodied up and look at ourselves. See the love that drips from His side for us. Feel in ourselves how much we long to love in return, for that is the only language that the human heart truly appreciates. Love in return for love. St Ignatius in the 1st Week of the Spiritual Exercises reflects this Lenten experience. The medications therein are centred on God’s love which despite our sinfulness and unworthiness, is unconditional. The meditations are on the sin of the angels, the sin of Adam and Eve and one’s personal sins. In all the meditation, against the backdrop of God’s unwavering love, one is moved to gratitude and repentance.The flow within the 1st Week of the Exercises is similar to the movement within the season of Lent. It begins with a recognition of my sins, remorse for them and a firm resolution to align my life to my Saviour and Lord. At the end of week, three questions are asked that reflect one’s desire to reform.
“What have I done for Christ?” is a question that is centred on my past. So, what are my past sins?
“What am I doing for Christ?” focuses on what my present disordered attachments are. Where are my energies focused on?
“What ought I to do for Christ?” is a question that invites me to change my way so as to live with greater love and more authentic service. I am invited to leave behind my disordered attachments and the useless pursuits that do not give life so that I can run after Christ. In everything, all I do is in return love for Christ’s sacrifice. I love you, my Lord and my God.
