A few years ago, I was in our church praying Stations of the Cross before the Blessed Sacrament. Stations is a beautiful and moving devotion that invites us to pray with events that led up to Jesus’s crucifixion and death, to meditate on the sufferings and indignities he endured on Good Friday.
As I was looking at the crucifix, I was thinking about the welts and wounds on his back from the scourging, the nails in his hands and feet, the spear which pierced his side, the jeers of the watching crowd. I was moved with pity. I turned my gaze to the Blessed Sacrament on the altar and said to Jesus, “Lord, it must have been so horrible.”
It wasn’t an audible voice, but in my heart I heard Jesus’s response:
“It was, but I was thinking of you, and that made it easier.”
Just let that sink in for a moment. Look at a crucifix if you have one nearby. Imagine what it must have been like for Jesus, who could have put a stop to the crucifixion at any moment, to endure that torment willingly. And then, try to imagine him picturing your face in his mind in the midst of that suffering. He endured it all for you.
“I was thinking of you, and that made it easier.”
Those of us who are believers, I’m sure, have been told many times over the years that Jesus died for us. But in my mind, at least, thinking about the truth that Jesus “died for us” has mostly meant “all of us,” humankind as a whole. It is entirely different to consider that he did it for me, specifically and personally, that while he was bleeding on the cross he had me on his mind. That is a wonderful and amazing truth.
We are so loved.
This is a basic truth of the Christian life. God, who is love itself, created us out of love, and loves us unconditionally, no matter what. We can do nothing to make Him love us any more or any less.
Pope Benedict XVI said it this way: “Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”
This truth can be life-transforming if we allow it. Let the truth that we are loved, that we are necessary be at the core of who we are, and at the core of who we want our young people to become. When our children have peer struggles, or don’t make the sports team, or make a poor choice in class, we can remind them: Those things don’t define who you are. Your value does not come from those things. They all fade away with the passage of time--sports, wealth, worldly success. But if we root our identity in the truth that we are loved by the God who created us, that identity never, ever changes.
"I was thinking of you, and that made it easier.”
Our students are loved. Our students are necessary. They have been created with a purpose, and it is a great honor and privilege as parents, guardians and educators that we get to help them discover God's purpose for their lives.
Every time we see a crucifix, let’s remember that in that most horrific of injustices, Jesus was thinking of you. He was willing to die for you.
And let us all do our best to love one another in the way Jesus has loved us.