It was Bishop Fulton Sheen – a very eloquent writer, preacher and teacher – who had a television show (in black and white) – when I was growing up – who some of you may remember for his piercing dark eyes, high cheekbones – and a booming baritone voice – who said in his book: "Life of Christ" that "Jesus Christ is the only person in human history who was born into the world to die! Jesus is the only one who lived a human life backwards."
This means that the Cross on which he died, 33 years after his birth, was always a part of his life. Bishop Sheen tells us that "there is hardly anything that Jesus ever said or did that can be understood without relating it to his self-sacrificial death on the Cross."
Jesus came to be the Suffering Servant! And this is our Lenten perspective – our Lenten theme – to learn everything we can about Jesus who willingly, and deliberately and lovingly made haste for the Cross from the moment he left his mother's arms and took his first steps!
Our first reading today describes the problem that Jesus came to reconcile – fix – heal! Our first parents sinned grievously against God, the Father-Creator. They mistrusted his word to them, they disobeyed a direct order from him! They fell for the clever musings of a snake – the personification of the Evil One – and they lost all of the gracious gifts that God had given them. Basically the only thing they had left was each other – and a cold, cruel world to endure.
The only one who could "fix" the problem was one who was both God and man at the same time! Only God could bring about justice with God; man had to be the one offering a suitable sacrifice, because he was the offender. Only one person in history could fit this bill: Jesus – who was the Son of God and Son of Man at the same time.
And so, when all was ready, in the fullness of time, Jesus arrived on the human scene and made his way to the Cross! Only a complete offering in love - to the point of death - of himself to the Father, could bring about the forgiveness of sins and the beginning of a brand new kind of life for all human beings.
As St. Paul tells us in the first reading: it was the TRUST and OBEDIENCE that Jesus had and offered to his Father that "bridged the gap." But it was not going to be an easy trek to the Cross at all. Going into the desert to prepare himself for his life's work – at age 30 – Jesus was tempted at the end of a very long period of fasting and prayer to forget about the Cross. It was the same tempter tempting who tempted our first parents. "Don't go for the Cross," Satan taunts Jesus. "Look, I can give you supreme power on the earth; I can satisfy your hunger for bread and all the good things of life, after all you are practically starving, aren't you?; I can make you like a god on this earth if you fall down and worship me!"
Jesus, however, unlike our first parents, who were not even hungry and distressed when they sinned, NEVER TOOK HIS EYES FROM HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN - OR THE CROSS AWAITING HIM – and he told Satan: "No!" NO! NO! NO! I will not be derailed from the path that I freely choose to take. Be gone!" And Satan left him, for the time being!
JESUS ALWAYS LIVED HIS LIFE – voluntarily, joyfully and freely – IN THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS– because he knew about Easter Sunday – he knew that it would all turn out! It didn't make any of his suffering easier – as we will see in the coming weeks – but it did make it doable! There is nothing he would not have done to redeem us! He came to this world for US!
What does this mean for us? We are children of our first parents! And even though we are baptized into the life of Jesus' death and resurrection - and are adopted children of God – we still are weighed down by the residual effects of that first sin! And in fact, we still sin! All of us! We are sinners!
Therefore, we can do two things during this Lenten Season to help ourselves – 1) we can remember that we are sinners and begin to really learn to ask for God's mercy – to ask for a purity of heart that will make our souls whiter than snow; 2) we can remember that we too have a cross shadowing our own lives: it's a condition for our entrance into eternal life: Jesus said: "I carried mine! Now, you carry yours! But just remember that yours is only a miniscule fraction of the weight of the one that I carried! And I am here to help you carry it! Your yoke will be easy, and your burden light!"
Let us this Lent say YES YES YES to Christ our Lord, Christ our Brother, Christ the Suffering
Servant! Let us open our lips and our mouths and proclaim his praise always!
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