The Love Up There and the Love Down Here

 I am not including the Gospel this week because it’s the very long reading of Christ’s Passion with which everyone is familiar.

Perhaps too familiar?

Sometimes it’s difficult to pay close attention to this Gospel as it’s being read on Passion Sunday and again when it’s read on Good Friday; it’s so long and everyone has heard it so often. It’s pretty easy for the mind to wander off in spite of all good intentions.

There are two short things I would like to draw your attention to and perhaps by lodging them in your mind, you will hear whatever you hear at Mass with a different frame of heart.

The first is something Jesus said to his disciples after the Last Supper when they had gone up to the Mount of Olives. It wasn’t very flattering. He said, “You will all become deserters.”  This was said to the ones who would carry on his mission and especially to Peter, the one who would be the Rock on which he would build his Church. In other words, he was telling them that they would let him down, betray him, fail him, be inadequate for the job and make the decision to be absent when he was most desperately in need of their presence, their support and their love.

He knew all this in his heart. He knew it without a shadow of a doubt. In all of history, before and after the crucifixion, there has never been such betrayal as when Jesus’ friends and brothers ran away and left him all alone to die. They abandoned him to face the terror and pain on his own.

Do you think that when Jesus was on the cross gasping out in pain, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing,” he wasn’t just praying for forgiveness for the Roman soldiers who were taunting him and causing him such excruciating agony? Could he not have also been praying for the disciples who were not there, who were hiding in terror? He was suffering on that cross for the ones who had ultimately betrayed his love and he had never loved those disciples as much as he loved them while he was on that cross.

The disciples’ weakness, fear and poorness of heart and spirit which resulted in terrible failure, was not the end of the story. Not the end of the story. NOT THE END OF THE STORY.

How often do you stop at your failures, weaknesses and inadequacies and write the end of your story right there? If that was where Jesus had stopped in his love there would be no cross and no salvation. But he says, “That’s the end of the story only you can write but I’m the one who picks up the pen and keeps on writing in blood right through to the resurrection. I have won! I am now the True Author of your story.

The second incident I want to draw your attention to is nearer to the end of the reading: “There were some women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses, and Salome. These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.” In John’s gospel we read that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was there as was John himself.

The women did not desert Jesus nor did John who was the disciple closest to the heart of Jesus. I truly believe this is because the women and John understood Jesus’ teachings better and in more depth. They were not receiving his message with just the intellect; they understood the heart language of his message. When we believe in the Lord with just our intellect, we understand and agree to the rules. When we believe with the heart, we become submerged in the rivers of his compassion, forgiveness and mercy. Our intellect is needed for assent, but it’s our heart that leads us to fall deeply in love with Jesus.

John and the women who stayed at the cross didn’t just intellectually agree with Jesus’ message; they had fallen completely in love with him. They loved him like a son, a brother, a best friend, a teacher and a savior before they even knew what salvation was. He was their Beloved Lord before the other disciples understood what a fullness of relationship with Jesus meant. John and the women were probably terribly afraid as they stayed near the cross but their love and their grief were stronger – stronger even than death. To know how they felt, put your child, your husband, your best friend, your mother or father or your favorite brother or sister up on that cross and imagine if you could see yourself running away, even if you were afraid. 

Don’t think that Jesus did not catch the significance of the presence of those who stayed with him. The Father had sent True Love to stay with him in his hardest hours. Perhaps the presence of his mother and John as well as the other women was what gave him the grace to say, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do. Forgive the ones who ran away and left me. They don’t know me yet so they don’t know whom it is they have betrayed. Blessed are the ones who are with me. Thank you for their love and their presence. Thank you…”

As Jesus gave up his life, John and the women were beautiful signs to him that he was cherished and not alone. He had not been completely abandoned. They were the ones who intuitively understood how far Love would go to rescue the lost. It is said that at the end of John’s life the only thing he could say to the people was, “Little children, love one another.” He knew that love, not intellect or even a harsh death, was the saving power of Jesus. It all came down to love. It all comes down to love.

During the readings of the Passion this Sunday and on Good Friday, even if you lose concentration at times, be there as one of the women who stayed with him in his final hours. Be there as John. Grieve with them. Weep with them. Ache with them.

Be there…and be blessed by his gratitude.