Category: Lent & Holy Week

How marvelous, and at the same time amazing, is this mystery! We can never meditate this reality sufficiently. Jesus, though being God, did not want to make of his divine prerogatives an exclusive possession; he did not want to use his being God, his glorious dignity and power, as an instrument of triumph and sign of distance from us. On the contrary, “he emptied himself” assuming our miserable and weak human condition –in this regard, Paul uses a quite meaningful Greek verb to indicate the kenosis, this descent of Jesus. The divine form (morphe) is hidden in Christ under the human form, namely, under our reality marked by suffering, poverty, human limitations and death. The radical and true sharing of our nature, a sharing in everything except sin, leads him to that frontier that is the sign of our finiteness  –death. But all this was not the fruit of a dark mechanism or a blind fatality: It was instead his free choice, by his generous adherence to the salvific plan of the Father. And the death which he went out to meet –adds Paul– was that of the cross, the most humiliating and degrading that one can imagine. The Lord of the universe did all this out of love for us: out of love he willed to “empty himself” and make himself our brother; out of love he shared our condition, that of every man and every woman. In this connection, Theodoret of Cyrus, a great witness of the Eastern tradition, writes: “Being God and God by nature and having equality with God, he did not retain this as something great, as do those who have received some honor beyond their merits, but concealing his merits, he chose the most profound humility and took the form of a human being” (Commentary on the Letter to the Philippians, 2:6-7).

Pope Benedict XVI, Wednesday General Audience, 8 April 2009, excerpt

Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, reminds us of this: ‘We must observe not only the day of the Passion, but the day of the Resurrection as well. Thus, we will have a day of bitterness and a day of joy; on the one let us fast, on the other let us seek refreshment…During this Sacred Triduum…Christ suffered, rested and rose from the dead. Of that three day period he himself says: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Epistle 23).

Our Lenten observances, indeed our whole life of faith, have been a preparation for this celebration of the Lord’s Paschal Mystery, our redemption from sin. May all of us bear witness to this joy in our daily lives; not only now but all through the year. And may our celebration of the Triduum be a time to reflect on our redemption through Christ, the eternal gift to us sinners from God the Father.

Today we recall the words Jesus spoke to Judas at the Last Supper, “The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” (Matthew 26:24). Judas has become is synonymous with the act of betrayal. In the Inferno, Dante places Judas in the very lowest circle of Hell, being devoured eternally by a three-faced, bat-winged devil:

Of that branch in ancient garden,

did thy Father make thy tree,

on that tree with thee uplifted,

let us triumph, Lord, with thee.

On that tree with thee uplifted,

let us triumph, Lord, with thee.

By thy words on road to passion,

Words that set thy children free,

Thou the Vine and we the branches,

let us triumph, Lord, with thee.

Thou the Vine and we the branches,

let us triumph, Lord, with thee.

To thy Father be all glory,

Equal glory, Lord, to thee,

By Spirit’s equal glory,

let us triumph, Lord, with thee.

By Spirit’s equal glory

let us triumph, Lord, with thee.

All glory, laud, and honor
to thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children
made sweet hosannas ring.

The people of the Hebrews
with palms before thee went;
our praise and prayer and anthems
before thee we present.

To thee before thy passion
they sang their hymns of praise;
to thee, now high exalted,
our melody we raise.

Thou didst accept their praises;
accept the prayers we bring,
who in all good delightest,
thou good and gracious King.

(Theodulph of Orleans (ca. 750-821), ca. 820; Trans. John Mason Neale (1818-1866), 1854)

O sacred head, surrounded
by crown of piercing thorn!
O bleeding head, so wounded,
reviled and put to scorn!
Our sins have marred the glory
of thy most holy face,
yet angel hosts adore thee
and tremble as they gaze

In this thy bitter passion,
Good Shepherd, think of me
with thy most sweet compassion,
unworthy though I be:
beneath thy cross abiding
for ever would I rest,
in thy dear love confiding,
and with thy presence blest.

(asc. to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, 1091-1153)

Commentary on the Book of Numbers

Saint Cyril of Alexandria

As the first-fruits of our renewed humanity, Christ escaped the curse of the law precisely by becoming accursed for our sake. He overcame the forces of corruption by himself becoming once more “free among the dead.” He trampled death under foot and came to life again, and then he ascended to the Father as an offering, the first-fruits, as it were, of the human race. “He ascended,” as Scripture says, “not to a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the real one, but into heaven itself, to appear in God’s presence on our behalf.” He is the life-giving bread that came down from heaven, and by offering Himself to God the Father as a fragrant sacrifice for our sake, he also delivers us from our sins and frees us from the faults that we commit through ignorance.

The human race may be compared to spikes of wheat in a field, rising, as it were, from the earth, awaiting their full growth and development, and then in time being cut down by the reaper, which is death. The comparison is apt, since Christ Himself spoke of our race in this way when He said to His holy disciples: “Do you not say, ‘Four months and it will be harvest time?’ Look at the fields I tell you, they are already white and ready for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving his wages and bringing in a crop for eternal life.”

Now Christ became like one of us; He sprang from the holy Virgin like a spike of wheat from the ground. Indeed, He spoke of Himself as a grain of wheat when he said: “I tell you truly, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains as it was, a single grain; but if it dies its yield is very great.” And so, like a sheaf of grain, the first-fruits, as it were, of the earth, he offered Himself to the Father for our sake.

For we do not think of a spike of wheat, any more than we do of ourselves, in isolation. We think of it rather as part of a sheaf, which is a single bundle made up of many spikes. The spikes have to be gathered into a bundle before they can be used, and this is the key to the mystery they represent, the mystery of Christ who, though one, appears in the image of a sheaf to made up of many, as in fact he is. Spiritually, He contains in Himself all believers. “As we have been raised up with Him,” writes Saint Paul, “so we have also been enthroned with Him in heaven.” He is a human being like ourselves, and this has made us one body with Him, the body being the bond that unites us. We can say, therefore, that in Him we are all one, and indeed He Himself says to God, His heavenly Father: “It is my desire that as I and You are one, so they also may be one in us.”