The Passion of Our Lord
Sermon
God's Love for Us
Pulpit Messages for the Lenten Season
Lent is that season of the Church's year
when we as Christians dwell on the Mystery of the Crucifixion.
And what the Crucifixion tells us is this:
God Himself died upon a cross,
to pour out His love for us,
to forgive us our sins,
to share His life with us now, and eternally.
Most of us associate this as the theme of Lent,
and yet, we also associate Lent with other things:
as a time of solemnity in the Church,
as a time when we should be especially more aware of our sins,
as a time when we should examine our spiritual lives before God,
as a time even when we worship at mid-week services,
as a time even when we think of making special sacrifices for God.
And yet, even though these things are associated with Lent,
what is especially important for us to realize is this:
what God went through in His love for us.
For as we more deeply realize this,
we will more deeply realize the love that God has for us.
So for the next few moments, let us do this:
let us examine Our Lord's Passion.
Let us examine what Our Lord went through
even physically in His love for us:
in His suffering,
His Passion,
and His crucifixion:
in His agony in the Garden,
in His scourging at the pillar,
in His crowning with thorns,
in His carrying the cross to Calvary,
in His crucifixion and death.
As we more deeply realize this,
what God went through in His love for us,
we will hopefully realize more deeply
the love that God has for us,
for you and for me.
Let us begin:
His agony in the Garden
The physical Passion of Our Lord begins in the Garden of Gethsemane,
the place called the Mount of Olives.
St. Luke, a physician,
the writer of the third gospel, reports this:
that Our Lord sweated drops of blood.
"And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly;
and His sweat became as great drops of blood,
falling down upon the ground."
On different occasions Our Lord has predicted His death,
for He has come to share His life for the life of the world,
but now in the Garden,
having seen a vision of the suffering that lay ahead of Him,
His sweat became drops of blood.
A condition known as Hematidrosis,
or bloody sweat,
where under great emotional stress,
capillaries in the sweat glands can break
mixing blood with sweat.1
This alone could have produced much weakness and possible shock;
from this we can only imagine
the inward suffering He was going through.
His scourging at the pillar
Holy Thursday quickly gives way to Good Friday.
He has been betrayed in the Garden by Judas;
the disciples have fled in fear for their lives;
He has been arrested by the chief priests and brought to question;
He has been struck across the face for remaining silent;
He has been mocked, blindfolded and spat upon.
And now in the early morning of Good Friday,
beaten, bruised, dehydrated, battered,
exhausted from no sleep,
He is led across Jerusalem to the Praetorium of the Fortress Antonia,
the seat of the Procurator of Judea,
the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate.
And after being questioned by Pilate,
Pilate, finding nothing guilty in Him,
prepares to have Him scourged
to satisfy the people.
Preparations for His scourging are carried out:
stripped of His clothing,
Our Lord's hands are tied to a post above His head.
A Roman soldier steps forward with a whip, a flagellum, in his hand.
A short whip, it consists of several heavy leather thongs,
with two small balls of lead attached near the ends of each.
As it is brought down again and again,
across Our Lord's shoulders, back and legs,
it first cuts only through the skin;
then through subsequent blows
the tips of lead rip into the skin,
making the back ribbons of flesh.
Usually when the soldier in charge
feels that the prisoner is near death,
the whipping is stopped.
This is now the case with Our Lord.
Beaten, in shock, half fainting,
dehydrated, exhausted,
in searing pain,
His shoulders, back, ribbons of flesh,
the stones wet with His blood,
He is now mocked.
His crowning with thorns
A robe is thrown across His shoulders,
a stick is placed in His hand for a sceptre,
and He will now be given a crown
- of thorns.
Branches with long thorns
are now plaited into the shape of a crown,
and pressed down into His scalp.
Copious bleeding now takes place.
He is mocked, struck across the face,
struck across the head,
the thorns being driven deeper into His scalp.
And now led before Pilate,
Pilate brings Him before the people:
crowned with thorns,
a stick for a sceptre,
a robe across His shoulders.
Ecce Homo:
behold the man;
behold our God.
But the people are not satisfied;
"Crucify Him," they shout.
"Crucify Him."
And Pilate,
politically deferring to the wishes of the people,
orders Him to be crucified.
His carrying of the cross
The robe is now torn off His back,
and, with searing pain, the wounds again reopen and bleed.
And Jesus Christ,
the Son of God,
God Himself Incarnate,
God Himself in flesh and blood,
is led along the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows,
to Calvary, Golgotha, the Place of the Skull,
to be crucified.
And in the ancient world,
there was no crueler form of execution than this.
The cross was normally divided into two parts:
the upright portion called the stipes,
which normally remained in the ground;
and the cross-arm called the patibulum,
weighing about 110 pounds,
normally carried by the condemned man,
which would be hauled up and placed in a notch in the stipes.
It is this that Our Lord carries along the Via Dolorosa,
as He makes His steep climb to Calvary:
either the full cross, or the patibulum,
weighing over 100 pounds.
Exhausted now, in shock,
bleeding, in searing pain,
He drags the cross along the "Street of Sorrows,"
stumbling and falling.
Along the way, the women weep;
Simon of Cyrene is impressed to help Him;
and, as tradition has it, Veronica wipes His face with her veil,
and a picture of His face miraculously appears on it.
Arriving now at Golgotha,
He is stripped of His clothes,
except for a loin cloth allowed for the Jews,
and His crucifixion begins.
His crucifixion and death
He is offered a mild analgesic of wine mixed with myrrh, but He refuses to drink;
His shoulders are then thrown backward against the cross-arm, and the soldier feels for the depression between the bones in His wrist.
(Nails placed through the palms of the hands
would not easily support the weight of the human body;
in the Bible, the wrist was considered part of the hand.)
The heavy wrought iron nail
is now securely placed in the depression of His wrist.
The hammer blows fall.
First, nails are driven through His wrists;
the Roman guards are careful not to pull His arms too tightly
to allow room for flexibility and movement.
Then a nail is driven through the arch of His feet,
one foot placed on top of the other;
the guards leave His knees moderately flexed.
Now Our Lord's body is nailed to the cross,
flesh pressed against wood,
a figure of suffering silhouetted against the sky.
A small titulus, or marker,
is nailed in place;
it reads: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."
And now a new form of suffering takes place.
As Our Lord slowly sags down,
more weight is placed on the nails in His wrists;
this causes excruciating pain in His hands.
As He pushes Himself upward to avoid the pain,
pressure is placed on the nail in His feet;
this causes searing pain there.
Either way He moves,
as He pushes upward, or sags downward,
there is excruciating pain.
And at this point, something else occurs
that would normally result in suffocation;
for death by crucifixion
did not occur by bleeding,
but normally in suffocating to death.
As Our Lord's arms fatigue, great cramps occur;
and with this, He is unable to push Himself upward
to breathe properly.
He does this spasmodically,
and it is here undoubtedly that He utters His seven last words,
His seven short sentences recorded in the Gospels:
To the Roman soldiers, throwing dice for His seamless garment,
and the crowds who mock Him, He says this:
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
To the penitent thief, dying beside Him,
who turns to Him for help at the hour of his death,
He says this:
"This day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
To Mary, His mother, and the beloved disciple John,
kneeling before the cross, He says this:
"Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother."
Then, quoting from the 22nd psalm,
a psalm of suffering and God's victory, He says this:
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me";
a psalm uttered from the depths of His human nature,
in the mystery of His Incarnation as truly God and truly man;
a psalm that prophesied His suffering, death, and ultimate triumph:
"I am poured out like water,
I can count all my bones,
they cast lots for my garments;
Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down;
men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it."
And then, His fifth cry,
"I thirst";
again from psalm 22:
"My tongue cleaveth to my jaws";
here a sponge filled with sour wine, vinegar,
is placed to his lips.
And now, in extremis,
"It is finished";
His work of Atonement is done;
having borne upon Himself the sins of the world,
He can now allow His body to die.
"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in union with him we might share the righteousness of God;
behold, now is the day of salvation."
And finally, with a last surge of strength,
Our Lord says this:
"Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit":
humanity yields to divinity,
suffering to victory,
death to life.
Following Our Lord's last words,
in order that the Sabbath be not profaned,
the soldiers now go, on Pilate's orders,
to break the condemned men's legs.
This is the normal method of ending a crucifixion,
by crurifracture,
so that the condemned will be unable to push themselves up,
and so die by suffocation.
The thieves' legs are broken;
but when they come to Our Lord,
the soldiers see that this is unnecessary:
He is dead already.
To be sure of His death,
they pierce His side with a spear.
From His side comes water and blood,
evidence that Our Lord literally died of a broken heart.
His body is now taken down from the cross,
and placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
His suffering, Passion and crucifixion are now finished:
The Sacred Victim,
immolated on a cross,
suffering pain and agony beyond words in His love for us,
having bled in the Garden,
been scourged at the pillar,
crowned with thorns,
carried the cross,
been crucified, suffered and died,
His suffering was now finished.
His suffering,
but not His love for us.
For three days later,
Our crucified Lord rose from the dead.
Easter!
Resurrection.
God's suffering love for us,
is God's eternal love for us.
The Passion of Our Lord,
what God went through in His love for us,
to pour out His love to us,
to forgive us our sins,
to share His life with us now, and eternally,
God's love for us,
is hopefully something that we realize more deeply.
May our hearts be broken by His suffering;
may our hearts be moved by His love for us;
may our hearts reach out this moment to embrace Him.
For in this,
in reaching out our heart to Him,
Our life will be His,
and His life will be ours.
Amen.
1. I am indebted to Dr. C. Truman Davis, M.D., of Mesa, Arizona, for his work entitled "The Crucifixion: The Passion of Christ from a Medical Point of View." It is a work that I would recommend for reading.
PRAYER BEFORE A CRUCIFIX
Look down upon me, good and gentle Jesus, while before Thy face I humbly kneel, and with burning soul pray and beseech Thee to fix deep in my heart live sentiments of faith, hope, and charity, true contrition for my sins, and a firm purpose of amendment. Meanwhile, I contemplate with great love and tender mercy Thy five most precious wounds, pondering over them within me, and calling to mind the words which David, Thy prophet, said of Thee, my Jesus: "They have pierced My hands and My feet; they have numbered all my bones."
when we as Christians dwell on the Mystery of the Crucifixion.
And what the Crucifixion tells us is this:
God Himself died upon a cross,
to pour out His love for us,
to forgive us our sins,
to share His life with us now, and eternally.
Most of us associate this as the theme of Lent,
and yet, we also associate Lent with other things:
as a time of solemnity in the Church,
as a time when we should be especially more aware of our sins,
as a time when we should examine our spiritual lives before God,
as a time even when we worship at mid-week services,
as a time even when we think of making special sacrifices for God.
And yet, even though these things are associated with Lent,
what is especially important for us to realize is this:
what God went through in His love for us.
For as we more deeply realize this,
we will more deeply realize the love that God has for us.
So for the next few moments, let us do this:
let us examine Our Lord's Passion.
Let us examine what Our Lord went through
even physically in His love for us:
in His suffering,
His Passion,
and His crucifixion:
in His agony in the Garden,
in His scourging at the pillar,
in His crowning with thorns,
in His carrying the cross to Calvary,
in His crucifixion and death.
As we more deeply realize this,
what God went through in His love for us,
we will hopefully realize more deeply
the love that God has for us,
for you and for me.
Let us begin:
His agony in the Garden
The physical Passion of Our Lord begins in the Garden of Gethsemane,
the place called the Mount of Olives.
St. Luke, a physician,
the writer of the third gospel, reports this:
that Our Lord sweated drops of blood.
"And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly;
and His sweat became as great drops of blood,
falling down upon the ground."
On different occasions Our Lord has predicted His death,
for He has come to share His life for the life of the world,
but now in the Garden,
having seen a vision of the suffering that lay ahead of Him,
His sweat became drops of blood.
A condition known as Hematidrosis,
or bloody sweat,
where under great emotional stress,
capillaries in the sweat glands can break
mixing blood with sweat.1
This alone could have produced much weakness and possible shock;
from this we can only imagine
the inward suffering He was going through.
His scourging at the pillar
Holy Thursday quickly gives way to Good Friday.
He has been betrayed in the Garden by Judas;
the disciples have fled in fear for their lives;
He has been arrested by the chief priests and brought to question;
He has been struck across the face for remaining silent;
He has been mocked, blindfolded and spat upon.
And now in the early morning of Good Friday,
beaten, bruised, dehydrated, battered,
exhausted from no sleep,
He is led across Jerusalem to the Praetorium of the Fortress Antonia,
the seat of the Procurator of Judea,
the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate.
And after being questioned by Pilate,
Pilate, finding nothing guilty in Him,
prepares to have Him scourged
to satisfy the people.
Preparations for His scourging are carried out:
stripped of His clothing,
Our Lord's hands are tied to a post above His head.
A Roman soldier steps forward with a whip, a flagellum, in his hand.
A short whip, it consists of several heavy leather thongs,
with two small balls of lead attached near the ends of each.
As it is brought down again and again,
across Our Lord's shoulders, back and legs,
it first cuts only through the skin;
then through subsequent blows
the tips of lead rip into the skin,
making the back ribbons of flesh.
Usually when the soldier in charge
feels that the prisoner is near death,
the whipping is stopped.
This is now the case with Our Lord.
Beaten, in shock, half fainting,
dehydrated, exhausted,
in searing pain,
His shoulders, back, ribbons of flesh,
the stones wet with His blood,
He is now mocked.
His crowning with thorns
A robe is thrown across His shoulders,
a stick is placed in His hand for a sceptre,
and He will now be given a crown
- of thorns.
Branches with long thorns
are now plaited into the shape of a crown,
and pressed down into His scalp.
Copious bleeding now takes place.
He is mocked, struck across the face,
struck across the head,
the thorns being driven deeper into His scalp.
And now led before Pilate,
Pilate brings Him before the people:
crowned with thorns,
a stick for a sceptre,
a robe across His shoulders.
Ecce Homo:
behold the man;
behold our God.
But the people are not satisfied;
"Crucify Him," they shout.
"Crucify Him."
And Pilate,
politically deferring to the wishes of the people,
orders Him to be crucified.
His carrying of the cross
The robe is now torn off His back,
and, with searing pain, the wounds again reopen and bleed.
And Jesus Christ,
the Son of God,
God Himself Incarnate,
God Himself in flesh and blood,
is led along the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows,
to Calvary, Golgotha, the Place of the Skull,
to be crucified.
And in the ancient world,
there was no crueler form of execution than this.
The cross was normally divided into two parts:
the upright portion called the stipes,
which normally remained in the ground;
and the cross-arm called the patibulum,
weighing about 110 pounds,
normally carried by the condemned man,
which would be hauled up and placed in a notch in the stipes.
It is this that Our Lord carries along the Via Dolorosa,
as He makes His steep climb to Calvary:
either the full cross, or the patibulum,
weighing over 100 pounds.
Exhausted now, in shock,
bleeding, in searing pain,
He drags the cross along the "Street of Sorrows,"
stumbling and falling.
Along the way, the women weep;
Simon of Cyrene is impressed to help Him;
and, as tradition has it, Veronica wipes His face with her veil,
and a picture of His face miraculously appears on it.
Arriving now at Golgotha,
He is stripped of His clothes,
except for a loin cloth allowed for the Jews,
and His crucifixion begins.
His crucifixion and death
He is offered a mild analgesic of wine mixed with myrrh, but He refuses to drink;
His shoulders are then thrown backward against the cross-arm, and the soldier feels for the depression between the bones in His wrist.
(Nails placed through the palms of the hands
would not easily support the weight of the human body;
in the Bible, the wrist was considered part of the hand.)
The heavy wrought iron nail
is now securely placed in the depression of His wrist.
The hammer blows fall.
First, nails are driven through His wrists;
the Roman guards are careful not to pull His arms too tightly
to allow room for flexibility and movement.
Then a nail is driven through the arch of His feet,
one foot placed on top of the other;
the guards leave His knees moderately flexed.
Now Our Lord's body is nailed to the cross,
flesh pressed against wood,
a figure of suffering silhouetted against the sky.
A small titulus, or marker,
is nailed in place;
it reads: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."
And now a new form of suffering takes place.
As Our Lord slowly sags down,
more weight is placed on the nails in His wrists;
this causes excruciating pain in His hands.
As He pushes Himself upward to avoid the pain,
pressure is placed on the nail in His feet;
this causes searing pain there.
Either way He moves,
as He pushes upward, or sags downward,
there is excruciating pain.
And at this point, something else occurs
that would normally result in suffocation;
for death by crucifixion
did not occur by bleeding,
but normally in suffocating to death.
As Our Lord's arms fatigue, great cramps occur;
and with this, He is unable to push Himself upward
to breathe properly.
He does this spasmodically,
and it is here undoubtedly that He utters His seven last words,
His seven short sentences recorded in the Gospels:
To the Roman soldiers, throwing dice for His seamless garment,
and the crowds who mock Him, He says this:
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
To the penitent thief, dying beside Him,
who turns to Him for help at the hour of his death,
He says this:
"This day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise."
To Mary, His mother, and the beloved disciple John,
kneeling before the cross, He says this:
"Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother."
Then, quoting from the 22nd psalm,
a psalm of suffering and God's victory, He says this:
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me";
a psalm uttered from the depths of His human nature,
in the mystery of His Incarnation as truly God and truly man;
a psalm that prophesied His suffering, death, and ultimate triumph:
"I am poured out like water,
I can count all my bones,
they cast lots for my garments;
Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down;
men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it."
And then, His fifth cry,
"I thirst";
again from psalm 22:
"My tongue cleaveth to my jaws";
here a sponge filled with sour wine, vinegar,
is placed to his lips.
And now, in extremis,
"It is finished";
His work of Atonement is done;
having borne upon Himself the sins of the world,
He can now allow His body to die.
"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in union with him we might share the righteousness of God;
behold, now is the day of salvation."
And finally, with a last surge of strength,
Our Lord says this:
"Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit":
humanity yields to divinity,
suffering to victory,
death to life.
Following Our Lord's last words,
in order that the Sabbath be not profaned,
the soldiers now go, on Pilate's orders,
to break the condemned men's legs.
This is the normal method of ending a crucifixion,
by crurifracture,
so that the condemned will be unable to push themselves up,
and so die by suffocation.
The thieves' legs are broken;
but when they come to Our Lord,
the soldiers see that this is unnecessary:
He is dead already.
To be sure of His death,
they pierce His side with a spear.
From His side comes water and blood,
evidence that Our Lord literally died of a broken heart.
His body is now taken down from the cross,
and placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.
His suffering, Passion and crucifixion are now finished:
The Sacred Victim,
immolated on a cross,
suffering pain and agony beyond words in His love for us,
having bled in the Garden,
been scourged at the pillar,
crowned with thorns,
carried the cross,
been crucified, suffered and died,
His suffering was now finished.
His suffering,
but not His love for us.
For three days later,
Our crucified Lord rose from the dead.
Easter!
Resurrection.
God's suffering love for us,
is God's eternal love for us.
The Passion of Our Lord,
what God went through in His love for us,
to pour out His love to us,
to forgive us our sins,
to share His life with us now, and eternally,
God's love for us,
is hopefully something that we realize more deeply.
May our hearts be broken by His suffering;
may our hearts be moved by His love for us;
may our hearts reach out this moment to embrace Him.
For in this,
in reaching out our heart to Him,
Our life will be His,
and His life will be ours.
Amen.
1. I am indebted to Dr. C. Truman Davis, M.D., of Mesa, Arizona, for his work entitled "The Crucifixion: The Passion of Christ from a Medical Point of View." It is a work that I would recommend for reading.
PRAYER BEFORE A CRUCIFIX
Look down upon me, good and gentle Jesus, while before Thy face I humbly kneel, and with burning soul pray and beseech Thee to fix deep in my heart live sentiments of faith, hope, and charity, true contrition for my sins, and a firm purpose of amendment. Meanwhile, I contemplate with great love and tender mercy Thy five most precious wounds, pondering over them within me, and calling to mind the words which David, Thy prophet, said of Thee, my Jesus: "They have pierced My hands and My feet; they have numbered all my bones."
