Moved and Transformed by Love and Mercy

To those who feel weighed down with guilt and shame, and can experience overwhelming pain in their struggle with accepting God's forgiveness, I write this to you! Lent is not meant to be a time to be overcome with sadness contemplating the suffering and death of Jesus, but rather it is a time to be captivated by pondering in awe the depth of our Savior’s Love for us. “Good Friday is the drama of love by which our everyday life is sustained … it is the key to understanding the ‘love that moves the sun and all the other stars’” writes Fr. Richard Neuhaus.

Last Lent as I was praying the Stations of the Cross, I was overwhelmed with the depth of my sinfulness. And so during each station I begged Jesus to forgive me for my sinfulness and my failures. As I walked the stations in the empty church, my sin was ever before me as I prayed with Mary and contemplated her sorrows of witnessing Jesus' torture and death, unto receiving Him again in her arms. This image always reminds me of Jesus as a newborn wrapped in swaddling clothes in the arms of His Mother. The sight of the lifeless, broken body being placed in the arms of His Mother never fails to move me deeply as I consider the once perfectly formed newborn Son which the Father sent to us in Love -- now disfigured by sin -- no longer the perfectly formed, flawless Man -- Jesus is now broken, bloodied, rejected and spurned, the Man of Sorrows, marred beyond recognition ... this is the same Jesus that Mary receives once more in her lap as she offers Him back to the Father.

As I meditated on the passion of Jesus – I imagined the great suffering He endured and contemplated Jesus receiving blows and scourges and vehement insults and blasphemies and I imagined the pain Mary felt as she witnessed these atrocities being committed against her Son. But, an amazing realization came to me as I was contemplating His passion; it was the understanding that Jesus never for a moment – or even for a fraction of a moment – not even for a split second -- felt angry or vengeful towards his attackers! The Holy Spirit inspired me with the realization that Jesus, as Love enfleshed, never felt even a moment of anger or hatred toward those who were harming him – even as they were whipping him, even as they tore his flesh off his body or nailed Him to the Cross, or insulted and spit upon Him. He, Who was not only their Creator, but their Redeemer and the Dearest and Deepest Lover of their souls, never for a moment reacted angrily! As the God Man, He endured such cruelty and felt every physical and emotional blow, and yet being Love Himself, He could not NOT love -- and so even as He was being abused, he loved and forgave his attackers (he loved me and forgave me!) immeasurably… completely …. forgiving each of us whom He created out of love, even as they (I, we) abused, mocked, ridiculed and blasphemed Him by our sinful, selfish ways!

This realization overwhelmed me with emotion. Emotion so strong that it moved me to sob to the deepest core of my being --deeply and for a long period of time – as I came to understand in a deeper way, how much Jesus loves me – even in my sin – He doesn’t hate me or even feel anger toward me --even for a moment! "While we were sinners, Christ died for us!" Romans 5:8.

He looks at me – at each of us -- His attackers – only with love and compassion and forgiveness, which He articulates in His first words spoken from the Cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” Luke 23:34. And I recognized that through the different trials of life, Jesus had been preparing Mary for this hour. He had been expanding her heart, so that she, too, could echo Her Son's loving mercy. So at this moment she could recognize and embrace us as her own children. When Jesus entrusted Mary to us and us to Mary, Jesus was entrusting us with His greatest gift -- the Mother who would lead us into Love -- and at the same time, He was entrusting us to her, we who crucified her Son!

I can’t express how deeply moving and healing this realization has been to me -- how often I have meditated on this and how often I have wept in gratitude for God’s limitless forgiveness and mercy.

I pray that this realization moves each one of us this Lent. I pray this understanding inspires us to stop and ponder not only the weight of our sinfulness and the resulting agony and passion that Jesus endured to save us .... But, to not stop there... but to go deeper into pondering the overwhelming love and compassion Jesus has for each of us in our sin and our frailty. He doesn’t take our sin lightly, the Cross and Passion shows us the horrible wages of sin….

The Cross truly is the place where truth and love meet and justice and peace kiss (Ps 85: 11) as Jesus bears the just weight of our sins in order to transform us by, and through, and in love, to make us into children of God, heirs of the kingdom, who are crucified to sin and death, but alive in Christ Jesus, redeemed and made new creations by experiencing Jesus’ compassionate forgiveness and responding with hearts aflame with gratitude and humility!

This Lent, as we contemplate the Passion of Christ, may we be moved by Love in an ever deeper, transforming way, so we can say, "Were are hearts not burning within us as He opened the Scriptures for us?" Luke 24:32.