Donald X. Burt, O.S.A.
1929 – 2014
Readings
2 Sm 5:1-3
Ps 122:1-2, 3-4, 4-5
Col 1:12-20
Lk 23:35-43
It was the end of the beginning … the end of that first phase of the story of human destiny. It had begun with such great hope … God making humans in his own image because he wanted to have someone else to love and to have that someone freely love him in return. But things went bad quickly. Humans envied God more than loved him. They tried to be God and consequently lost the grand possibility of being with God for all eternity. They became wanderers, forever blocked from that heaven that was their only possible home.
But then they were given another chance. God himself came in the person of Christ to show humans that he still loved them and understood the suffering they endured. God came to earth as Jesus Christ to make amends for that great sin that had damned the race. The humans had reached out for the forbidden fruit of the tree of life and died. Christ would reach out for the gnarled wood of a cross and die so that humans could live forever happy.
The time had come for the final scene. Jesus was nailed to the cross waiting for the end. The soldiers had just finished dividing his few earthly possessions. He had nothing left but his ebbing life and the love of those who still cared for him. But even this love seemed to be diminished. Those followers who had so recently cheered him now stood under the cross cursing: “He cured others; let him save himself! He claimed to be a friend of God; let God save him!”
Perhaps there was nothing personal in their curses. They were just staking out new territory. They had put their hopes in Jesus bringing them some sort of better life on earth. Now that he had failed they rushed to make friends with his victors. Maybe they did not hate Jesus at all. They just wanted to be on a winning side.
The Roman soldiers seemed a bit more gracious than the crowd. Being foreigners they knew nothing about Messiahs; but kings they understood and it puzzled them that a man should be crucified under an inscription that read: “THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS!”
It was just another sign of the craziness of this people that they were supposed to control. They felt sorry for Jesus in his suffering and they gave him some of their own wine to drink but they could not resist a taunting question: “If you are a king, why don’t you save yourself?” They did not understand that Jesus had come not to save himself, but to save the human race. It was the end of the beginning and humans would not fully understand the glory of the moment until they stood at the beginning of the endless … that eternal life when finally and forever they would be at home with their flesh and blood, that God-Man who was indeed their king.
