“until three in the afternoon”
When Christ hung on the cross for three hours, He felt suffering, persecution, and abandonment. These were the things He felt throughout his Passion - from the time in the Garden all the way to Golgotha. We too suffer, get persecuted, and feel abandoned here in this life. Yet, when we unite ourselves to the love of the cross and connect our sorrows to that of Jesus and Mary, we can grow in holiness.
Why did Christ have to suffer and die? Christ not only had to suffer and die, but wanted to. He wanted to because it would satisfy the divine justice of our sins. Isaiah foretold this by saying, “Ours were the sufferings He bore, ours the sorrows He carried... Yet He was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On Him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through His wounds we are healed”. [1] It was His will to want to heal us through His wounds. Christ also willed to suffer and die in order to spur our grateful affection and love. When we look at a cross we see the horrific scene of how much we had to pay for our salvation. God wants us to see it not as a negative, but as how much He loved us, and we must be inspired by this love to love Him as much as He loved all of us. Finally, the sufferings of Christ teach us to embrace our crosses of achieving holiness and sanctification. [2]
Christ suffered and died for all mankind. Even if there was one soul left to save on this world, Jesus would have done everything He did. Those who are not saved also receive sufficient grace for salvation through Christ’s Redemption. If they are not saved, it is not because Christ did not die for them, but because they refused to cooperate with the grace Jesus merited for them on Calvary. [3]
What is suffering? Suffering is the disagreeable feeling which we experience when something (a situation, a circumstance) does not correspond to our hopes, needs, desires, and does not harmonize and gel with what we want but contradicts and opposes them. [4]
Who has to suffer? Is anyone spared from suffering? No! Everyone has to suffer or rather gets to suffer. Even Jesus, himself, had to suffer and die for us and Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, also suffered. God did not want us to feel suffering or persecution, but through Adam and Eve, our first parents, we have been led in that direction due to our original sin, and our desire to sin (i.e. concupiscence). In the definition above it is stated that suffering is when our hopes, needs and desires do not harmonize with what we want. Sin is when our will does not harmonize with God’s will. Since God is all good, to not harmonize with God, through sin, is to suffer. The word compassion means, “to suffer with.” Jesus and Mary where never out of harmony with God, but we are. They chose to suffer with us in our disharmony in order to bring us to union with God. Are we willing to suffer with another, in order to bring them to harmony with God? Are we willing to share in their suffering?It is difficult to share in the suffering of just one other person, imagine Our Lord, who did not just suffer with one or two, but all, the whole world.
"Everybody God to Suffer" by Fr. Stan Fortuna. It is quite simple, no matter your age, ethnicity, sex, or anything else that may make us unique, one thing we all have in common is we all suffer. Jesus Christ took on this role as the suffering servant. He bore all the sufferings, pains, and tortures on the cross to show us how to bring good and holiness out of our own sufferings.
Why do we still suffer? We still suffer in that we must follow the way of Jesus Christ. He is the only way to be saved. He is the “one mediator” [5]. When in the torments of suffering we should look to resist in feeling sorry for ourselves. This tendency of allowing ourselves to be overcome by our suffering is “the worm of Christian sorrow” as a priest once put it. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, “Prayer united to sacrifice is the most powerful force on earth.”
How do we overcome suffering? It consists of forgetting ourselves with our sorrows and running to God. We should look to alleviate others sufferings, especially those that have worse sufferings than ours. It won’t take us long to realize our sufferings, are nothing compared to that of someone else's. However, we know there are people who are addicted to “drama”. They feel the need to inflict some sort of suffering upon themselves. They continue to want attention. The problem with this is, those who do this begin to drown in their own sorrows and refuse every impulse to generosity. On the other hand, there are those that forget themselves, maintain a more steady balance of joy and sorrow, and think more of others than for themselves. [6] Remind them that first, we all suffer and it will come find us without us even having to go search for it. We must be simple souls, able to handle any suffering, persecution, and abandonment from our friends, and let go all of those things, and come to the one who has never left us and will never abandon us - God. We remember that the suffering that we have in life is one of four things that we can offer to God daily. In the Morning Offering, we offer Jesus, our joy and suffering, our works and prayers. Suffering might be the thing we offer in the most quantity.
Why was Jesus scourged and persecuted? Little is mentioned about the scourging in today’s gospel, but it was customary for the Romans to scourge someone to the point of almost death. Jesus was struck over forty times on his back with rods and whips with pieces of metal and rock. Jesus did all of this for us. He endured all things to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah and the “suffering servant”. [7]
Being the suffering servant, He was to be persecuted in every facet of His being. In today’s world, celebrities and politicians can be adored and praised one day and then just as quickly be treated horribly, mocked, and persecuted the next. Each of us can be persecuted on a daily basis; how will we respond?
We may not be scourged like Jesus, but we can be scourged by the images we see, the language that is spoken, the music that we listen to, the manner in which we handle situations when someone is unhappy with us, especially hating us for the positions we take on marriage, abortion, stem cell research, the Mass, and many other things. We are scourged by the devil with tempting thoughts of giving into our temptations, pleasures, and desires. We can be tormented with greed, lust, envy, and all the deadly sins in our lives. As long as we connect ourselves with Christ in those times of great persecution and realize that “if the world hates you, remember that it hated me first” [8] The world hated Jesus too, but if we cling to Him and unite our sufferings and persecutions to His, we too can gain eternal paradise.
What are ways in which we are persecuted? When we are persecuted we can welcome the suffering as a blessing if we remember the words of Jesus in the beatitudes, “Blessed are those who are persecuted.” Saint Benedict reminds his monks in The Rule to “bear persecution for justice sake” and “to bear patiently wrongs done to oneself.”
How did Jesus feel abandoned? Remember that Jesus is fully human and at the darkest time God the Father had Jesus feel the sense of human abandonment that we sometimes feel. It is the feeling that all is hopeless. Where is God in this situation? Jesus, like we should at all times, knew that God the Father was still there with Him at all times. He never doubted His presence, He felt alone and with good reason. His followers had left Him, the people that once cheered Him are now jeering Him, and the small handful of people that are there for Him are powerless to do anything to help Him. When are the times you have felt abandoned? Who did you turn to in your time of feeling alone? How do we deal with rejection?
Who is responsible for Jesus death? Superficially, many people will say that Christians blame the Jews for killing Jesus Christ. However, this is completely inaccurate and false. The Catechism teaches us that the Jews are not collectively responsible for Jesus’ death [9] The Second Vatican Council solemnly stated, “Neither all Jews indiscriminately at the time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during His Passion...The Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or accursed as if this followed from Holy Scripture.” [10] Then who is responsible for Jesus’ death? All who have sinned were the authors of Christ’s Passion. [11] Jesus died for all who had sinned, were sinning, and were going to sin. When we sin, we are as guilty as the ones who bound Jesus’ hands to the cross. “Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts.” [12] And as St. Francis of Assisi wrote, “Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.” [13]
What is a crucifixion? A crucifixion was a way of execution of a criminal by nailing or binding them to a cross. It was originally used in the East, but later adopted by the Romans to inflict on any condemned person who could not prove Roman citizenship. The crucifixion of Jesus is recorded by all four Gospels. According to tradition, Christ was probably fixed to the cross with four nails and covered with a loincloth, as prescribed by the Talmud. [14]
Why did Jesus die on a cross? As mentioned above, the cross was used to execute any criminal. However, Jesus, as God, intended the cross to stand for something more. It stands for whatever pain or endurance that a Christian has to undergo, and voluntarily accepts, in order to be joined with Christ and co-operate in the salvation of souls. [15] This is why, even before dying on the cross, Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me”. [16]
Death on a cross is significant in that it comes not primarily from the blood loss, but from suffocating. By nailing Him to the cross, we take the life breath out of the very God that gives us the breath of life.
Why should we love the cross? As we pray during the Stations of the Cross, “We adore you, O Christ, and bless you.” We respond, “Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world”. We should love the cross because it redeemed us with God the Father. Jesus Christ completely empties himself on the cross solely for the love of each of us.
The cross of Jesus was the supreme proof of His love for us. Our cross that we carry should be the prime example of our love for Him. Jesus showed His complete love for us by His death on the cross. In a similar manner, the reality of our love is made apparent by the acceptance of sufferings out of love for Him. “The Cross is, therefore, both the instrument and the work of love, as much that of God’s love for us as that of our love for Him.
What did the Cross do for us? By Christ’s death on the cross, Christ redeemed us: from the guilt of sin and thus reconciled us with His heavenly Father, from the punishment we deserved for sin in this life and in the life to come, and from the power of the evil spirit who, because of sin, became as Christ said, “the prince of this world [that] is to be overthrown.”(John 12:31) [17]
Jesus took the Cross and transformed it from a terrible instrument of torture, into a most efficacious instrument for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind. Pope John XXII had a crucifix on his bedroom wall. He prayed in front of it before retiring, upon arising, and whenever cares awakened him during the night. “A cross,” he said, “is the primary symbol of God’s love for us.” [18]
[1] Isaiah 53:4-5
[2] Basic Catholic Catechism Course pg. 23
[3] Basic Catholic Catechism Course pg. 23
[4] Divine Intimacy 127 pg. 375
[5] 1 Tim 2:5
[6] Divine Intimacy pgs. 383-384
[7] Isaiah 53
[8] John 15:18
[9] CCC 597
[10] NA 4
[11] CCC 598
[12] Roman Catechism I, 5, 11; cf. Heb 6:6; 1 Cor 2:8
[13] Admonitio 5, 3
[14] Modern Catholic Dictionary pg. 139
[15] The Modern Catholic Dictionary pg. 139
[16] Matthew 16:24
[17] Basic Catholic Catechism Course pg. 23
[18] The Stations of the Cross with Pope John Paul II 10th Station