Weekly Catholic Bible Study

Oratory of Divine Love Reflection 725: The Passion of the Lord: A Reflection on the Gospel of John (John 19 : 1-42)

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head, and clothed him in a purple cloak, and they came to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck him repeatedly. Once more Pilate went out and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak.
And he said to them, “Behold, the man!” When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out,
“Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find no guilt in him.”
 

The Jews answered, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.” Now when Pilate heard this statement, he became even more afraid, and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” Jesus did not answer him. So Pilate said to him, “Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.”

Consequently, Pilate tried to release him; but the Jews cried out, “If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”

When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out and seated him on the judge’s bench in the place called Stone Pavement, in Hebrew, Gabbatha. It was preparation day for Passover, and it was about noon. And he said to the Jews, “Behold, your king!” They cried out, “Take him away, take him away!  Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross himself, he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus in the middle. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.”
Now many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city;
and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate,  “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four shares, a share for each soldier. They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top down.
So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be, “in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says: They divided my garments among them,  and for my vesture they cast lots. This is what the soldiers did. Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.” There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop
and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.

Now since it was preparation day, in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath,
for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken
and that they be taken down. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out. An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may come to believe. For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled: Not a bone of it will be broken.
And again another passage says: They will look upon him whom they have pierced.

After this, Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus. And Pilate permitted it. So he came and took his body. Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom. Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried. So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day; for the tomb was close by.

 

 

 

In Genesis 22, we find the story of Abraham being asked to offer up his son, Isaac. We read there: Some time after these events, God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, ““Abraham!” “Ready!” he replied. Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”

 

A few verses later, it continues:

“Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father Abraham. “Father!” he said. “Yes, son,” he replied. Isaac continued, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?” “Son,” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust.””

 

We all know the rest of the story . . . how Abraham bound his son and placed him on the altar. Just as his knife was plunging toward his son, an angel of God restrained him. God then knew that Abraham put love for God above love for his son. 

 

The reason I bring up this story is that it has a lot of parallels to what we commemorate today. We usually view Good Friday from the angle of Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. I would like to explore today how it was affecting the other Two Persons of the Blessed Trinity. 

 

Like Genesis 22, it was his Beloved Only Son that God the Father was sacrificing on the altar of the Cross today. His heart was breaking, even more than Abraham’s was. Abraham got let off the hook. God the Father was not so lucky. When Isaac had asked about the sheep for the holocaust, Abraham had replied, “Son, God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust.” And indeed, God himself DID provide the sheep for the holocaust – Jesus, the Lamb of God. 

 

What in the world could cause the First and Second Persons of the Blessed Trinity to willingly go through so much agony?! The answer: Love. It was his love for us that caused God the Father to sacrifice his son like Abraham did. As the familiar passage from John 3:16 states, “Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” And elsewhere, in 2 Cor 5:19 we read, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”

It was likewise love that propelled Jesus to undergo such unspeakable pain and sorrow – love for us, and love for his Father. Such intense love, on the part of those two Persons of the Blessed Trinity, is hard for us to comprehend, because we are only operating with a finite intellect and understanding, whereas they are infinite, and so far beyond us. 

 

So where does that leave the Holy Spirit on Good Friday? None of the Evangelists mention a dove appearing, like at his Baptism, or tongues of fire, like at Pentecost. Was he disinterestedly taking a nap up in heaven all the while? Of course not. He was in the thick of it with the other two Persons. 

 

The Blessed Trinity is a mystery we will never completely understand. However, one explanation is that the reciprocal love between the Father and Son is so great, that it actually forms another Person – the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son. He is their spirit personified. In line with this schema, if it was love that compelled the Father and the Son to go through so much anguish, then it was the Holy Spirit himself who was the driving force. The whole Trinity was equally involved in this monumental event that reconciled humankind back with its Creator again. Adequate atonement was provided; sufficient recompense was made. As St. Anselm proposed, since the offense was made against an infinite Person, finite persons would never be able to sufficiently atone. God himself had to provide the Lamb. 

This act of the Blessed Trinity opened the gates of heaven for us again after so many thousands of years. We have so much to be grateful for. It was love that drove the Trinity to do this drastic act. Let us love them in return.

 

by Fr. Stephen Muller

 

Prayer: I beseech you, most sweet Lord Jesus Christ, grant that your Passion may be to me a power by which I may be strengthened, protected, and defended. May your wounds be to me food and drink, by which I may be nourished, inebriated, and overjoyed. May the sprinkling of your Blood be to me an ablution for all my sins. May your death prove to me life everlasting, and your cross be to me an eternal glory. In these be my refreshment, my joy, my preservation, and sweetness of heart. Who lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.

 

Quote from a Saint: “The death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory. In taking upon himself the death that he found in us, he has most faithfully promised to give us life in him, such as we cannot have of ourselves.” – St. Augustine

 

 

Questions for reflection:

1. Have you ever meditated upon how Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac prefigures the Father’s sacrifice of the Son?

2. Have you ever attended the Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion service? What was your experience? How did it deepen your understanding of Good Friday and commemorate Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross?

3. How does a deeper understanding of the Lord’s Passion lead to a deeper understanding of God the Father?

4. How does a deeper understanding of the Lord’s Passion lead to a deeper understanding of the Holy Spirit?

5. Do you find that reflecting on the Passion helps you to better appreciate Easter?

6. Have you ever done something painful for the Love of someone you care deeply for?

7. How well do you understand the Holy Spirit? Since the Holy Spirit will likely always remain a mystery to humans with our limited intellect, how can meditating on the Holy Spirit bring you closer to the Trinity?

8. Do you meditate upon the Passion of the Lord outside of the Lenten season? How can mediating upon this benefit the spiritual life throughout the entire year?

--Benjamin & Kristen Rinaldo, CfP