The day of my Salvation came through unbelievable Suffering!

The day of my Salvation came through unbelievable Suffering!

When anyone experiences suffering in any form or moment the outcome can always be seen as a mark within their psyche.  We can view the imprints left through the eyes of love.  Who would want to feel the strokes of a whip or the tearing away of flesh from a healthy body?  Yet, that is what our Savior, Jesus Christ experienced on that day of forgiveness that his Father allowed to occur.  

Why replay this period in human history that may still be on the minds of believers now that his Resurrection has passed?  Simple!  It has not fallen into the pages of a novel or taken a place on so many shelves of history.  It is so real that the scars of ignominy will never fold away into the pages of “Do you Remember when?”  If the Father would have chosen a lesser manner to wipe away sin, the many scenes of torture would have fallen into oblivion without any semblance of meaning.  Could this type of  torture, with very little suffering, make a difference in a word where many people go through years of cancer and other maladies in the human body without relief?  Not likely!  As with Missouri using the theme of “Show Me” on their license plates, the idea of leaving a motto that will stick in the minds of people must be one that will cause them to tremble.  Using the lyrics of the old negro song; “Where you there when they crucified my Lord?”  “Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble. tremble, tremble.”  “Were You there when the sun refused to shine?”

Words set to a theme that makes anyone listening reach into the meaning of our Lord Jesus being nailed to a tree, in agony, blood dripping from his Holy Body, and the words; “Father, forgive them, they not what they do.  We need that theme to be experienced daily, as in the Holy Mass when the Easter Triduum becomes real every doxology; “Through him, with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever.”  Amen!

Without a real reminder that our salvation was from God alone through his unending love that he would send his Son as a sacrifice; the only Sacrifice that we wouldn’t forget, this is the deep and abiding generosity of a God who not only represents love; he is only love.  That is the Crucifix we carry on our rosary beads, and the one people wear around their necks or hang from the rear view mirror in their cars.  The one mandate that a Crucifix be in view of the altars in Church and remember we are a Christ Crucified entity and we constantly view the Cross with a corpus in our Church Sanctuary

These symbols are more than objects of worship, they are the tangible artifacts that we can hold, and keep next to our hearts as this is the path to heaven and eternal unison with our creator, God Almighty.

Ralph B. Hathaway