Our Lord described himself as having a baptism
wherewith he was to be baptized. John gave him the baptism of water, but the
Roman soldiers have him his baptism of blood. After opening his sacred flesh
with violent stripes, they now put on him a purple robe which adhered to his
bleeding body. Then they plaited a crown of thorns which they placed on his
head. They mocked him and put a rod in his hand after beating him on the head.
Then they knelt down before him in feigned adoration.
Fulton J. Sheen Life of Christ
In today’s first reading
we hear ‘I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull
out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.’ (Isa 50:6
ESV) The suffering servant’s treatment points forward to Our Lord’s
mistreatment at the hands of Roman soldiers and the crowd on his way to Calvary.
It is brutal and unpleasant, even more so when we consider that He had preached
and lived God’s love and healing and forgiveness. We see God incarnate mocked
and physically abused by those he came to save. Nowadays the Church, certainly
in this land, faces less scorn, hatred, and violence than elsewhere, but far
more indifference, which is worse in many ways. People have grown cold to the
message of love, and prefer to ignore it, safely cosseted in a cocoon of
materialism, obsessed with self – spiritually empty and miserable.
In the Gospel we see Judas is still concerned with material
things, having criticised the reckless generosity of Mary’s anointing Jesus’
feet, he now goes to the chief priests and asks them ‘What will you give me
if I deliver him over to you?’ (Mt 26:15 ESV). These are words for the
church: we still have modern-day Judases willing to betray our Lord, his Gospel
and his Church for the sake of ambition and advancement. Perhaps a pointy hat
is today’s thirty pieces of silver, and too many in the church follow Judas in
preferring the ways of the world to those of God. But we must follow Our Lord’s
example and love them. This is after all what we are preparing to celebrate:
the fact that the love of God can be ignored and rejected but never overcome –
in Christ the victory of the Cross is complete and absolute, it restores our
relationship with God and each other and allows us to live in a community of
love, close to God, fed by him, with him, healed and restored by him, prepared for
and given the hope of heaven where we may enjoy eternity in the presence of the
Trinity.
In Christ we see a life lived not for self, not to acquire wealth,
or status, or power, but lived for others – to share with them the love of God,
to heal and restore them – offering them an alternative to the ways of the world
with its selfishness, its greed, the desire for power and domination. Instead, he
offers humble service and power shown in weakness – this is the power of God to
transform the world. This is what the Church is called to follow and live out in
the world – a life of self-giving, sacrificial love – this is what we are called
to in our baptism, that we may embody and live out the faith which we profess to
help transform the world. We need to be reminded of it, day by day and year by year
because the Church has to remain true to her calling to help share the love of God
with the world around us, so that it may believe and be transformed after the likeness
of our crucified and risen Saviour. After nearly two thousand years we have not got
there yet, but we still press on, changing the world one soul at a time, confident
in the victory and the saving love of him who died and rose again for us.
So let us come to him, to be fed by Him, and
with Him, healed and restored by Him, through the sacraments of the Church, his
body, so that we may be prepared to celebrate with joy the triumph of His
Paschal victory, so that we and all the earth may give praise to God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most
right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever
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