By his stripes...

This is Mr. Weber's Easter message to the students of JPII, given at the assembly during Holy Week, 2013. 

The last three hours of my mother in law’s life were so horrible that I find it difficult to speak about even now. She died of congestive heart failure. One of the symptoms of that illness is that your lungs fill up with fluid. Early on you take diuretic drugs to remove the fluid, and she did this for over a year, but eventually, the diuretics cannot keep pace, your lungs fill up and you can’t breath, and the sensation is you’re drowning because you can’t get a good breath. In her last hours, my wife, Daniel and I stood by her side in utter horror, completely helpless, watching our mother and grandmother drown before our eyes.  When she finally passed away, we were deeply saddened, but we were grateful that her suffering was over.

Though I try not to think about it, I am reminded of all this when celebrate the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection during Holy Week this week. We read the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and death from one gospel during our Palm Sunday liturgies yesterday, and we will read it again on Good Friday from a second gospel.

The problem, of course, is that the story of Jesus’ death is so familiar to us that it’s almost as if we are inoculated from feeling any of the horror or pain that Jesus experienced. Those of you who are Catholic know how we read the story at Mass: the priest is Jesus, the "narrator" is usually the deacon or lector, a third "voice" is usually another lector, and the congregation plays the "crowd". So at that climactic moment just before death, when Jesus is in so much pain that even HE feels abandoned by God, here’s how we read it (in dull monotone): 

Narrator: Then Jesus cried out in a loud voice:

Priest: “Eloi, eloi, lama sabbachthani”

Narrator: Which means

Priest: “My God, my god, why have you forsaken me. "

I don’t think so! 

This was a man who had been scourged. We imagine scourging as being whipped, but the Roman practice resembled more of a beating, as the whip was very short, with ropes tied to a handle, and at the end of the ropes were lead balls or pieces of bone. When the whip hit the back, it wasn’t so much as a whippow! snap! as a thud, as the bits of bone landed on the back and tore at the flesh. 

Then Scripture tells us that the soldiers mocked Jesus by making him a crown of thorns, which they pressed onto his head and scalp. These are areas, if you’ve ever been cut there, that bleed profusely, so it’s quite likely that Jesus could barely see through the blood in his eyes.

Then Jesus was made to carry his cross to Golgotha. Archaeologists say that Golgotha was just outside the main city gates of Jerusalem, which like most ancient cities, was walled —part of what the Romans wanted to achieve by crucifying people was to send a warning to whomever might violate Rome’s dictates.  To add to that, the person to be crucified often had to carry the upper beam of the cross, which was tied behind his head, and weighed anywhere from 75 to 125 pounds.  Tradition has it that Jesus fell three times on the way to Golgotha, and if you think about it, he wouldn’t have had any way to break his fall, And though our Christian sensibilities require us to put some sort of loincloth around Jesus—we don’t want a naked man hanging in our churches—the reality is the crucified were stripped naked to humiliate the victim.  

When he arrived at the site of crucifixion, he was flung to his back, and his wrists and feet were nailed. Rome was expert at this, and wanted to prolong the agony, so they were careful to avoid puncturing any major arteries, which would have allowed the person to bleed to death too quickly. He was likely nailed through his wrists. Then he was hoisted up.  From there, the victim might live on 12, 24 or even 36 hours, depending on how badly beaten he was before hand.  The most common cause of death wasn’t blood loss but asphyxiation, or suffocation, caused by the pressure on the lungs from hanging. Rome knew this, which is why they nailed the feet to the cross, so that when the lungs were about to burst, the person’s survival instinct would cause him to push up from the nail in the feet, despite searing agony, thus prolonging the suffering. That’s why it was considered merciful to come and crush the man’s legs, because without the ability to push up, the person would suffocate more quickly.  (If breaking someone’s legs is an act of mercy, it gives you some sense of the horror of it). 

So we come to the part of the story where Jesus cries out to God. But with nails in his feet and wrists, with blood from the crown covering his face, with his back ripped apart by the scourging, as his lungs gasp for air, I tend to think it was more like this: (screaming) MY GOD! MY GOD! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?

Back to my mother-in-law: Part of what happens to you when you see someone suffer so much is you ask yourself why? My mother in law was a saint. She prayed daily. She suffered some hardships throughout her life, but always remained faithful. She and my father in law had seven kids and sent them to Catholic schools all the way through, which meant she didn’t have much money to go on vacations or enjoy some of the finer things in life. Now that her children were grown up, why didn’t God give her good health and allow her the chance to travel and enjoy the golden years of her life? 

And the longer you allow yourself to go down that path, and the more you think about how much she suffered at the end, the less sense it all makes, and the angrier you can get at God. Maybe he doesn’t truly care. Maybe he’s not truly all-powerful. Maybe he doesn’t answer prayers. Maybe her faith in him was misplaced. MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN HER?

For those of you who have gone through something painful—maybe you’ve lost someone close to you—a parent, a grandparent-- maybe your parents have gone through a divorce and now you don’t see your dad much and you miss him, maybe a friend of yours has betrayed you, or someone that you thought was a friend has said something deeply cutting or unkind about you behind your back—these are occasions of real suffering, and it’s OK to recognize them for what they are. Jesus clearly suffered. So do we.

We live in a society of comfort, of pampering, and of instant gratification.  In such a society, suffering is seen as the ultimate evil—if you’re suffering, you’re cursed, or acting stupidly, or not seeing things the right way and have to change your perspective. Something’s wrong with you. But the story of Easter that we celebrate this week tells us something dramatically different: suffering IS.  It was a fact in Jesus’ life, it is a fact in our lives, and it’s a fact in the lives of people we love and care about.

But it’s not the ONLY fact, and ultimately, it’s not the FINAL fact. The final fact is the resurrection! --that somehow, through our suffering, God redeems us and lifts us up. The Jesus beaten down and crucified becomes the risen Jesus, transfigured and glorified.  My mother in law, once sickly and dying, is now with the saints in heaven, pain-free, enjoying the company of her husband, her mother and father, and all of her friends and family who died before her. 

This is what we celebrate this Easter. This is our ancient faith.  In some of the most beautiful poetry of the Old Testament, centuries before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah foretold of what we celebrate this Easter, saying:

He was spurned and avoided by men,

a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.  (Isaiah 53:3-5)

What More?

This is Mr. Weber's Easter message to the students of JPII.

The greatest sermon I’ve ever heard was when I was 15 years old, and I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a guest priest who spoke at our Church the week before Easter, and he told us about the story of his best friend growing up.

He and his friend met in kindergarten, attended the same elementary school all the way through, then went to the same high school. They spent so much time together they were practically brothers, often spending the night at the other one’s house. He loved going to his friends’ house because he was from a large, Italian Catholic family, and his mother was an excellent cook who was always giving him food. As fate would have it, they were both drafted into the Vietnam War together and ended up in the same unit. The priest said that one night, they were on guard duty in a foxhole out on the front lines—just the two of them. It was a crystal clear night, starry, with no sound whatsoever, and he remembers his friend had pulled out a candy bar to eat, when suddenly, someone threw a live grenade into the foxhole, seemingly from no-where. They both hesitated, stunned. Then his friend, reacting more quickly, gave him a quick smile, handed him the candy bar, and threw himself on the grenade. His friend was blown apart and died instantly, but he was saved.

The priest said he was devastated for the loss of his best friend, and after the funeral, he spent a lot of time with the boys’ mother, mourning with her. He felt guilty that his friend had done what he had not done—why, he asked himself, had he not thought more quickly? Guilt turned to self-pity over the next several weeks. “Why him?” he asked the boys’ mother, over and over. “Why didn’t I do what he did?” “Do you think it was just instinct on his part?” “Do you think he did it out of love or was it just an automatic reaction?” “Do you think he really loved me?” The Italian mother, who herself had been grieving the loss of her son, could bear this no more. “You're asking me if he loved you? JESUS CHRIST, MAN, WHAT MORE COULD HE HAVE DONE FOR YOU?”

And the priest, as he told us this story, stopped, backed away from the lectern and said softly: “Jesus Christ—man, what more could he have done for you?” I was electrified, as if I had just heard the gospel for the very first time in my life. What more could Jesus have done for us?

As you know, this is the beginning of Holy Week, when we celebrate the passion and resurrection of Jesus. One of the real problems for us is that the story is too familiar. More than anything else, the passion and resurrection of Jesus is a love story—as John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” No matter what we’ve done, not matter what our sins, God loves us, and if we ask him, he will forgive us. He reminds us this Easter, that no matter how hard the cross we bear, that our final destiny is not the cross but the resurrection—that God’s love prevails, in the end.

The death and resurrection of Christ is the single-most important event in human history. I encourage you to attend your church’s services this week to remember and celebrate what God has done for us.