You know when you put the Cross around your neck, maybe around your rearview mirror or
maybe you hang it on the wall,
it’s easy to forget all that went into it.
When you make the sign of the cross before a prayer, multiple times in the course of the mass
it’s easy to forget all that’s behind it.
Jesus would never forget. And He’s calling us not to forget.
Not to forget the beauty and the love and the sacrifice of His passion.
You know when Jesus left the upper room after washing the feet, after giving us the Eucharist.
He left the upper room with His eleven closest followers. He went to the Mount of Olives.
And He went to a garden.
He went to a garden to begin to set straight what went wrong in the garden with Adam.
And as He goes into the garden with the eleven and then a little further with His closest
three followers, they all fall asleep when Jesus is going to pray.
And He’s going to prostrate himself before the Father. And He’s so over come with anguish
that angels had to come and minister to Him in the garden of Gethsemane.
You know, Gethsemane is a really interesting word. Gethsemane literally means: the place
of crushing.
Because this is where on the side of the Mount of Olives they would take the olives and they
would crush them under heavy stones to extract the really precious olive oil.
And as Jesus is praying He’s filled with anxiety. Something really amazing happens
physiologically.
That the chemicals in His capillaries break down and He literally begins to sweat blood.
It’s a physical condition called hematidrosis.
It’s incredibly rare. But it does happen.
Have you ever been so stressed that you literally had blood seeping out of your pores?
So stressed that God himself had to send angels to minister to you?
As the night progresses he’s going to have one of His formerly closest friends betray him with a kiss.
He’s going to be led away in chains. He’s going to be beaten and humiliated.
He’s going to be subjected to a mock trial. He’s going to be left overnight, trapped, locked up.
As the day progresses He’s going to have another mock trial before the Roman governor.
And as the day goes on He’s then going to be turned over to the Roman soldiers to be scourged, to be flogged.
Now under Jewish law, you can be flogged you can be hit and struck with a rod, but not
more than 40 times. And this was meant to discipline someone to teach them a lesson.
The Romans didn’t have that caveat of mercy. The Romans didn’t have a rule that said
no more than 40. The only stipulation in Roman law was that a prisoner had to be beaten so
severely that his skin was barely hanging on.
So what the Romans would do is they would take what was called a “cat of nine tails”.
It was a whip of many chords. Each chord of braided leather.
At the end of each braid of leather was a small hook, or a small jagged piece of bone,
or a small metal ball.
The idea was that the legionnaire, the soldier would drive the whip, the cat of nine tails,
into the prisoners back so hard that those sharpened ends whether it be the metal ball
or the hook would dig into human flesh
and then the soldier, the legionnaire would pull back the whip and it would tear the flesh
till literally tendons and muscles are being ripped and shredded till literally the skin
is just hanging on.
He’s then gonna have a crown of thorns as the ultimate sign of mockery.
The King of Kings is gonna have a crown made of thorns dug into His scalp as the blood falls
down His face but that blood would be mixed with spit as the solider mocked Him as they
take a heavy reed and they strike Him in the head.
Now as He’s brought out He’s going to be given the cross, the cross beam, this heavy
piece of splintered wood that’s gonna be placed upon open wounds so literally the blood
and the cross almost start to clot to one another.
Now He’s gonna be forced out in to the busy city streets. Jerusalem, the busiest time
of year during the feast of passover.
tens of thousands of extra pilgrims have made their way to this holy city to enter into
passover.
and now as He enters into the city street over crowded with people.
every movement with the cross is gonna send shocking pain through His body.
His kidneys are gonna shut down because of massive dehydration. His heart is gonna-
is gonna speed up to an erratic pace trying to pump blood that’s no longer there.
and as this happens His blood pressure is gonna drop and Jesus himself is gonna drop
under the weight of the cross under His loss of blood.
and as the day progresses as He get’s closer to calvary. He literally is going to have
His internal organs start to shut down.
He’s gonna have nine inch spikes driven through His median nerves sending a shockwave
of pain through His body that we really can not comprehend.
that His shoulders are gonna be pulled out six inches in both- in both directions and
as He’s nailed to the cross hands and feet.
He’s going to be raised naked and humiliated. Broken and bloody for all to mock.
As this happens now a fluid sack is gonna build around His heart. and around His lungs.
Pericardial effusion, pleural effusion are gonna set in as His body begins to shut down.
and as dehydration has fully set in He’s ultimately gonna go into what’s called hypovolemic shock.
and as He hangs upon the cross slowly dying He’s eventually going to die of asphyxiation
unable to breathe as He breathes His last for you and for me.
Now is that what you think of every time that you make the sign of the cross before a prayer?
Is that what you think of everytime you put a cross upon your body? You look at your
rearview mirror? You stare at a wall?
Are those the things that we think about?
Do we think about his passion? His death? Do we think about this act of great love?
Or do we often just sorta make the sign?
My brothers and my sisters, it’s not just about the how of what happened on Good Friday.
It’s about the why. And here’s a reality the you and I have to live with and think about:
that the God of the universe loves you so much that He would rather die
than risk spending eternity without you.
and He found the suffering to be worth it. He found you to be worth that suffering.
He found me to be worth that suffering.
God so loved the world that He sent his only begotten Son, that we would not perish but
that we would have eternal life.
The next time you make the sign of the cross, don’t just think about the how or the what,
you think about the who and think about the why.