by f. Luis CASASUS, General Superior of the men’s branch of the Idente Missionaries
New York, April 05, 2020. Passion (Palm) Sunday.
Book of Isaiah 50: 4-7; Letter to the Philippians 2: 6-11; Saint Matthew 26: 14-75.27,1-66.
From today, the Church invites us to meditate on the Passion of Christ. The spiritual tradition and the experience of the saints confirm the importance of this reflection. Thus, Saint Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), Founder of the Passionists, saw the Passion of Christ as being the most overwhelming sign of God’s love and recommended meditating on it as the most immediate door to union with him.
Similarly, Fernando Rielo, our Father and Founder, has repeated to us that our surname is that of Missionaries of Christ Crucified. And contemplating Jesus Christ’s Passion and the suffering of our Savior in various ways can certainly change our lives. What else can change us, if not love? Sometimes it is said that pain transforms us, but by itself it is not enough. The same occurs with knowledge. We are reluctant to change in depth, in an essential and permanent way.
A popular story begins with the Scorpion asking the Frog for a ride across the river. The Frog responds: Are you kidding? Of course not! I know you, Scorpion, and you would sting me and I’d die. No way will I carry you on my back!
The Scorpion challenges the Frog: Why would I do that? If I sting you and you die, we both drown. You have nothing to fear by carrying me across the river. The Frog decides that what the Scorpion said makes sense, so he agrees to the request.
Midway across the river, the Scorpion stings the Frog. As the Frog gasps his last breath before drowning, he implores the Scorpion, Why? Why did you sting me, knowing we will both drown? The Scorpion replies, It’s my nature.
Sure, examples of people who don’t change are plentiful. Because evidence of people not changing is abundant and because we may have struggled or failed in our own attempts to change, we tend to assume people don’t change their basic human nature.
Here is a striking example of the power of love to change us.
Recently, a long interview with a prisoner was broadcast. He had been in prison for decades. He killed while in prison so he could go to death row because the inmates there were treated better than where he was in the penitentiary facility. This man was a hardened criminal. He didn’t regret killing the man he did at all (this is what he said). But four years ago (before the show was shot) a cousin of his contacted him. They started writing letters. The cousin brought his family several times to visit the inmate. Through contact with someone who really cared about him, this inmate’s heart was softened. He never received any love before his cousin and the cousin’s family showed him love. And even though he received this love late in life, this love changed him.
Cain and Abel, Dismas and Gestas (the two thieves who accompanied the crucified Christ), St. Peter and Judas Iscariot, the younger and older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, are pairs of people who received identical love. Apparently, love “failed” in half of the cases, but it is important that we understand what it means that in the kingdom of heaven faith and hope will disappear, only love will remain.
There is nothing stronger than divine love, which we receive in many ways and, once it comes to us, nothing can prevent its effects. Sometimes love has to wait until the last moment of our life for and sometimes… a little longer. But true love lasts forever.
If we remember our love experiences in its many different faces, love by chance, love on purpose, interested love, brief love, lasting love, love that was too embarrassed to name itself, broken love that got repaired… shouldn’t we suspect that God’s love and the love we live trying to imitate Him are eternal?
It is clear that we do not know with total certainty what happened to Cain, Gestas or Judas Iscariot, after they died, but we do have personal experience of receiving God’s forgiveness, again and again, despite our hardness of heart.
Sometimes, after a serious, visible and scandalous fault. At other times, after being mediocre and insensitive to the suffering of others.
Such forgiveness manifests itself in many ways. From the slight impression that God continues to look at me, to the evidence that he is passionately asking me to do something concrete for others, a specific care for my neighbor.
Of course, not hardening our heart to the love received is the necessary and sufficient condition for change. If we do not harden our heart to the love received, the result is that we will not harden it to the brother in need either. Even if I think like a frog, or I act like a scorpion, I could understand that Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, was giving a proof of universal love and forgiveness. This was understood by the Roman officer on Golgotha, who had nothing to do with the Jewish religion or the teachings of Jesus.
It is a proven fact that love is the biggest difference-maker life has to offer us. It is sad, though, how hard it can be to find it sometimes, no doubt because the true workers of the harvest are few….and how terribly afraid of love some people can be. This happened to Judas, which is why he ended his life in suicide. When he saw the only one who loved him go to his death, he must have felt terribly alone to carry the weight of his mistake. He is gone, unfortunately, to vent his remorse, his inner torment to the wrong people, the temple priests who used him. If he had turned to Christ, his life would end in another way.
We all have an enormous capacity to reject, to refuse and not accept the love of our fellow men and the love of God. That is why the apostles, at the Last Supper, deeply saddened, begin to ask him, one by one: Am I the traitor, Lord?
This is one of the manifestations of the experience of Mystical Segregation. In a usually painful way, we are more and more aware of our fragility and our inner division: spirit and soul, my true self and my ego. Even if we do not remember a specific fault, we have the same impression of the apostles in the Upper Room: Will I be -in some way- the next traitor?
This Segregation sometimes manifests itself with a subtle impression: There must be something else… something important escapes me… I do not see the connection of what I am going to do with God’s will… That was the impression of Pilate’s wife: Have nothing to do with that righteous man. I suffered much in a dream today because of him.
Only the love we receive from the Blessed Trinity, with its three voices, can calm this anguish and make it an instrument of purification.
How, then, can we prepare ourselves to act with compassion; to avoid becoming inured to suffering, sliding from empathy and love into apathy and indifference? How can we keep from hardening our hearts? We could start by keeping in mind, in our recollection and stillness, that when we begin to make choices that conflict with our conscience we begin to harden our heart toward God. It is a slippery slope that just takes us, almost imperceptibly, further and further away from Him.
This indifference and estrangement are expressed by Pilate in his gesture of washing his hands, seeking to withdraw from himself all responsibility for the pain and suffering of others. It would be good for each of us to meditate today on how many ways we have to wash our hands and thus pretend to wash our hearts.
God did not miraculously saved Christ from the Cross. He, instead, transformed his defeat into victory, his death into birth.
In him God has made it known that he does not overcome evil by hindering it with astonishing interventions but by taking away its power to harm, even making it a time of growth for us. It is difficult to accept that unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit (Jn 12:24). That is why Christ had to instruct Peter, when he attempted to defend him with violence: Put your sword back into its place, for all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword. The kingdom of God began to fully show its power when, on the cross, the Lord has revealed all his love and his interest in the fate of humankind.
In every miracle of Jesus, the question needed to be asked of the bystanders was: Who is this? Ad this is not an academic, theological or philosophical question. Our answer to the identity of Jesus will determine the form and extent of our salvation. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, after healing many people and bringing the Word of God, can be considered as the confirmation of his identity as a servant King, Redeemer and Son of God.
Even today, for many of us, Christ, in practice, is a miracle worker from whom we expect the solution to problems that overwhelm us or perhaps a teacher who gives good advice…that we occasionally apply. The Cross teaches and demonstrates that Christ’s attitude is not like ours, that in his obedience there are no exceptions, excuses or calculations of the effort to be made. And this is reflected in the Cross.
This is why the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is seen as the beginning of the revelation of his true identity: our King and our Lord. Ironically, the title of King was given to Jesus in the title given to Him on the cross. In his narrative, Saint Matthew portrayed Jesus as a king His triumphal entry, the discourse between Pilate and Jesus, the wearing of the scarlet clothes… He is the serving and suffering King announced by the prophet Isaiah.
As Saint Paul reminds us in the Second Reading, the Passion did not end up simply with His death but with the Resurrection.
Today, we must show that Jesus is our King by pledging our loyalty to Him by living out His life of self-emptying and identifying with the sufferings and struggles of our fellowmen.
By saying that Christ is our King and Savior, we are not simply expressing that on our last day He will prevent us from being condemned. His salvation has immediate fruits in us: We can give meaning to all the suffering in our lives, we can change our most deeply rooted and negative habits, and we can also serve others in the most complete way, that is, by bringing them closer to a God who is Father and wishes to share with us His fatherhood/motherhood.
May the contemplation of Christ on the Cross during this Holy Week make us believe that you and I can change and that the essential change, the one that gives us life and He offers us, is to identify ourselves with His person.
