Jesus was lifted high on the cross in order to descend to the abyss of our suffering. He experienced our deepest sorrows: failure, loss of everything, betrayal by a friend, even abandonment by God. By experiencing in the flesh our deepest struggles and conflicts, he redeemed and transformed them.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In permitting himself to endure everything that we human beings have to endure, so Christ chooses to share this deepest of existential pains: the sense of being alone, without a loving father, or even a loving God. Here on the cross, Jesus cries out and gives voice to the deep sorrow of soul that afflicts so many of us.
‘Do you understand’ he said ‘what I have done to you? You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.’
“Behold your mother,” he says; and so he gives Mary to be truly our mother. Christ gives to Mary the perfection of her role as the sinless Virgin Mother of the Saviour, which is that she should lead us little Christians to perfection; that she should be our intercessor in our struggle against sin; and that she should be a mediator of those graces we need so that we may grow in holiness, growing “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ep 4:13).
Christ’s words to the good thief – Saint Dismas as he is traditionally called – show us how our lives can be changed and transformed in an instant, for the spiritual action of grace takes no time at all, if we open wide our hearts to God’s grace and mercy.
Christ says: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Hanging on the cross, Christ is the victim of the injustice of his own people. Almost all these people, arguably, knew what they were doing, and still did it anyhow. And yet, what is the judgement of Christ? How does the One who is Love Incarnate speak? He says: “Father, forgive them.” And then, going beyond this, he makes excuses for us: “They know not what they do.”
