PASSION OF CHRIST

“Three days: …let these three days challenge you to think deeply about the Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Don’t rush into Easter….We must experience deep pain as in the pain of birth pangs, in order to experience the joy of Easter. These 3 days are: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Saturday – the vigil of Resurrection conquest.

The first day, Maundy Thursday – this is the night Jesus was betrayed; Jesus met with His disciples to celebrate Passover and gave the command, the Mandatum, that we should love one another. Not necessarily with the love of our desiring, but with a demanding love, even demeaning love – as in washing the feet of faithless friends who will run away and leave you naked to your enemies, the betrayal and denial of friends.

The second day, Good Friday. Stay awhile; be quiet; let your heart be broken by the unspeakably bad of this Friday we call good. The life of all on this day died. Jesus, the Son of God, was forsaken by all – even God the Father…to be crucified. He died a painful, horrible and violent death from the sinners’ hands: US. We were there with the soldiers crucifying him, mocking him because we did not understand that it was for our sins that He died, for our sins that God forsook Him, for our sins, so that He may forgive us through and by His death.. Forgiveness has a cost: death. If forgiveness doesn’t have a cost, then sin does not matter at all. God’s GRACE is not cheap. We are all guilty….and yet we put the sin and the guilt on God, by shouting: “Crucify Him.” And yet, in God’s wisdom, in reality, as Jesus hung on the Cross, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” “For our sake, he made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. He forgave us not by ignoring our trespasses but by assuming our trespasses.

The 3rd day is the vigil of the Resurrection. Have you ever experienced emptiness in your life right after a loved one’s burial and you go home to find that your loved one is no longer there? This should be our experience on Saturday….the sense of feeling empty and lost because someone whom we loved dearly is gone. Tears should flow slowly from our eyes…and prayers should be uttered to strengthen our hearts for the loss.

We should fully experience the sadness and pain of these 3 days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Saturday…to be able in the truest sense of the word, experience the JOY of the RESURRECTION morning and to say, ” Jesus is risen from the dead! He is risen, indeed!

Contributed by Lina PADILLA