FIRST READING: Isaiah 50: 4-7. The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary. Morning by morning he wakens, he wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. EXPLANATION: The second-Isaiah describes in these verses how the suffering servant---the Messiah---accepts the role of suffering which the Father had designated for him. He is to preach the message of God's mercy to men. Many will reject him and torture him, but God is on his side and he will not be moved from his resolute purpose by their insults and injuries. The Lord has given me: It is God who has, appointed him teacher of the people and has given him "a well-trained tongue," the gift necessary for his task.
how . . . word: His preaching will touch both friend and foe. The former will be moved to listen and obey---the latter will grow stronger in their opposition.
morning by morning: His was a daily task, a difficult task, but:
I . . . rebellious: He continued notwithstanding the difficulties.
I gave my back . . . my cheeks: Literally fulfilled in the scourging at the pillar and the mocking of the Roman soldiers.
shame and spitting: In the presence of Caiphas (see Mt. 26: 67-68).
The Lord God . . . me: The source of his strength.
set my face like a flint: No insult or suffering would weaken his resolve (see Ez. 3: 8. when God promises the same strength to Ezekiel).
shall not he put to shame: All their insults and injuries (even crucifixion) will be in vain. He will triumph in the end. APPLICATION: The sufferings and crucifixion of our divine Lord in his humanity are the Christian's source of strength and encouragement in his daily struggles against, the enemies of God and of his own spiritual progress. Because of our earthly bodies, and because of the close grip that this world of the senses has on us, to keep free from sin and to keep close to God on our journey to heaven is a daily struggle for even the best among us. But we have the example before our eyes, the example of our true brother. He was one of ourselves, the truly human Christ. He not only traveled the road before us and made the journey, to heaven possible for us, but he is with us every day, close beside us, to encourage and help us on the way. We need to remind ourselves daily of this. We have the crucifix in our Christian homes, on our rosary beads, on our altars, on the very steeples of our churches. These crucifixes are not ornaments, but stark reminders that our Savior's path to heaven led through Calvary and through all that preceded Calvary. They are also stern reminders to us that the carrying of our crosses on the road to heaven is not an unbearable burden for us, but an essential aid to our progress. When you are tried by temptations, when you are tested by bodily pain or mental suffering, worried to death perhaps by the bodily needs of yourself or your family or by the disobedience and insults of ungrateful children, stop and think on the Leader and his humiliations and sufferings. He came to open the road to heaven for us, to make us all sons of God, to preach the message of divine forgiveness and mercy to mankind. What did he get in return? He was scourged, tied to a pillar, spat upon and insulted, jeered at and mocked. He was nailed to a cross on Calvary between two thieves! How light is my cross in comparison, how easy my Calvary. But he was sin less; his obedience, as man, to the Father was perfect. Can we or should we complain, we whose life up to now has often been far from perfect? Stop, think and listen to today's lesson.
SECOND READING: Philippians 2:6-11. Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. EXPLANATION: It is generally admitted that Paul is here quoting an earlier liturgics hymn in which the Judeo-Christian Church expressed its faith in the true humanity and the true divinity of Jesus Christ. He Who was God, humbled himself to become a man like us, hiding his divine glory but receiving it back at his resurrection, or exaltation. Because of this, everyone must confess and adore his equality in divine glory with his Father.
in the form of God: He was divine and did not cease to be divine when he became man but:
emptied himself: He did not let the divine glory appear. Instead his humanity, the same as that possessed by all men, was what was evident. He was a truly obedient servant (slave) of God however, as all men should be, but were not. This true obedience led him to the humiliating death on a cross (see Isaiah in first reading).
God exalted him: By raising him from the dead on Easter morning God restored to him the glory of the divinity that he had hidden during his earthly life (see Eph. 1: 21), and glorified his human nature.
name above every other name: Name stands for "person." He is exalted to the right hand of the Father in his humanity as well as in his divinity, the chief place in heaven after God the Father.
at Jesus name: The man who walked the roads and hills of Palestine, who ended his life on a cross, is none other than the Lord. Adonai is the name for God used by the Jews to avoid saying the sacred name Yahweh. It is God the Father who has proclaimed this, who "bestowed upon him the name" therefore:
every knee must bend: All men are bound to pay him reverence as God and:
every tongue confess: To proclaim their faith in the divinity of Christ the Savior is the basis of their Christian faith and the only hope of salvation for all.
to the glory of God the Father: His human nature also is sharing in the divine glory in heaven, the guarantee that our finite human nature can partake in some measure in this same divine glory if we have been his faithful brothers on earth. APPLICATION: As Christians we have no doubt as to the two natures of our Savior. He was the God-man. He humbled himself so low in order to represent us before his Father and by his perfect obedience. ("even unto the death on a cross") earn for us not only God's forgiveness but a sharing in the divinity, through his being our brother but also the Son of God. These words of Paul, or rather of the early Christian hymn he is quoting, are for us today a consolation and an encouragement. Surely every sincere Christian must be consoled by the thought of Gods infinite love for him, as shown in the Incarnation. We are not dealing with some distant, cold, legal God of justice who spends his time marking up our sins and failures against us. We are dealing with a loving Father who sent his own beloved Son to live among us and die for us in order to bring home to us the greatness of divine love. Could any human mind, even the minds of the greatest of this world's philosophers, have invented such a humanly incredible story of true love? No, it was only in the infinite mind of God that such a proof of love could have its source. What encouragement this should and does give to every sincere Christian. We know we are weak. We can and do sin often. We know we are mean and ungrateful and that we seldom stop to thank God for the love he has shown us. If we were dealing with a human, narrow-visioned God, we should have reason to despair, but when our Judge is the all-loving, all-merciful God how can even the worst sinner ever lose hope? No, there is no place for despair in the Christian faith. But there is room for gratitude and confidence. We can never thank God sufficiently for all that he has done for us. Eternity itself will not be long enough for this, but we must do the little we can. Let us face this coming Holy Week with hearts full of thanks to God and to his divine Son for all they have done for us. When meditating on the passion of Christ on Good Friday let us look with gratitude and confidence on the Son of God who died on the cross in order to earn eternal life for us. He did not die to lose us but to save us. He has done ninety per cent of the work of our salvation. And, even as regards the remaining ten per cent that he asks us to do, he is with us helping us to do it. Could we be so mean and so foolish as to refuse the little he asks of us?
GOSPEL: Luke 22:14-23:56.<EXPLANATION: Because of its length (153 verses), we omit the actual text of St. Luke's account of our Lord's passion, death and burial and also any detailed explanation of it. Luke's account agrees in substance, and frequently in detail, with that of the other Evangelists. First he gives the Passover Supper at the end of which Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist. The betrayal is foretold as are St. Peter's later denials of his Master. The agony in the garden, the arrest, the trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate. The latter declared Christ to be innocent, yet because of fear of the Jewish violence, he agreed against his will to have him crucified. The carrying of the cross to Calvary, where he was crucified between two thieves. His mockery by the leaders of the Jews, whilst he prayed his Father to forgive all those who were responsible for his passion and death "for they know not what they do." Finally, quoting psalm 31:6, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" he died, and was buried in a new tomb by an admirer (not as yet a follower), a holy member of the Sanhedrin who had not been associated with the Sanhedrin's condemnation of Christ. APPLICATION: The story and most, if not all, of the details of our divine Lord's sufferings at the hands of his fellow-Jews, his Father's Chosen People, on that first Holy Thursday night in Jerusalem and the subsequent sentence of crucifixion pronounced by a pagan Roman judge on one he had declared innocent of any crime, is well-known to any Christian, worthy of the name. But theoretical knowledge is not what makes a Christian or a follower of Christ. Down through the ages great men have lived and died and their lives and deeds have benefited others in many ways, for greater or lesser periods. But the life and death of Christ has not only benefited man's life on earth, it has changed the very purpose of man's existence, for it has changed his relationship with God and with his eternal destiny. Through and by the Incarnation, death, resurrection of Christ, we, mere human mortals, have been made sons of God by divine decree, and heirs of God's eternal kingdom of heaven. This was God's original plan in creating the universe. Man was to be the masterpiece of the divine act of creation and the master of the universe. He contains within himself a part of every created being and has the necessary faculties to dominate all the lesser creatures. But he was to be more than that. His human nature was to be raised to union with the Godhead in the Incarnation. This completed plan was eventually fulfilled in Christ. Therefore, the life and death of Christ is not just some recorded bit of history of the past, rather it is for all men, not Christians only, a fact of the past which dominates and basically affects rational man's purpose in life today and always as well as his day-to-day mode of living that life. There are millions on our earth today who, through no fault of their own, have not yet heard of God's infinite love for them as proved in the Incarnation, but God will find ways of extending its benefits to them if they do their part. There are millions too who have heard the good news but refuse to believe it or to act according to it; those too we can safely leave to the all merciful God. But for ourselves, professed followers of Christ, who during this Holy Week will be reminded daily of what God has done and is continuing to do for us, our only answer is to beat our breasts in humble contrition like some of the crowds returning from Calvary on that first Good Friday. We know we are utterly unworthy of the unfathomable love that God has shown us. When we look at the crucifix and see the Son of God nailed hands and feet to that cross, slowly shedding his heart's blood for us, what can we do but bow our heads in shame? If we did not jeer at him and mock him openly as the Pharisees did that day on Calvary, we did so indirectly by our coldness, our forgetfulness, and worse still by our many deliberate sins against God and neighbor. Pilate condemned the innocent Christ "for fear of the Jews, for fear of losing his job (St. John says); Judas betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver; the Pharisees forced Pilate to crucify him because of their pride. If we look into our past, how often have we offended him, that is, condemned him for similar reasons, and we are less excusable than these people were. We do, or should, know so much better than they did what Christ means to us. But while we have reason, all of us, to repent of our past faults during this Holy Week, we have also every reason not to despair but to hope. In the very height of his agony on the cross, our loving Savior uttered a fervent plea to his heavenly Father, asking for forgiveness for all those who had brought his death-agony on him. The words, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," hold for all time, we too were included there, and God's merciful answer to his dying Christ is for us too if we avail of it. Holy Week will be truly a holy week and a turning point in our lives if we repent of our part and turn to our loving God. Through the life, sufferings and resurrection of his beloved Servant and Son, He has made us his adopted sons and heirs of heaven. He will not fail us now.-c141 Click to return to our Home page
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