Has it really been a year?

I can hardly believe it has been almost a year since my last post - and what a year it has been!! I have been getting comfortable in my new job and it has definitely been an adventure!!

Heading an RCIA program is no easy task but it has been so rewarding. Journeying with people who are seeking God and the Catholic Church and then standing with them as they received their sacraments - yes, it was a great experience and I am already excited to start all over with a new group this August!

I will say that working in a parish is not without its challenges. There is so much to do, to learn, to see and to pray about. It becomes difficult to stay connected to God at times because you are surrounded by the Church all day - surprisingly, it makes it difficult to pray or commune with Him.

I found that when at Mass, where I used to effortlessly fall into prayer, I now have to focus and force myself to not notice all the things going on around me...it is kind of like how Doctor's might not enjoy watching medical dramas...I became too nit-picky.

Things are better now. I recently came off a retreat here in San Antonio called 'Hearts on Fire' in which we focused on our hearts and on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. it was a powerful retreat and I learned a lot about myself. I have been too focused on externals and ignoring what was going on within my own heart. I know now that God is calling me into an even deeper relationship with Him and I have to overcome some of my own pride, insecurities, fears and anxieties in order to get there.

It is definitely a process...I am hoping to go on a silent retreat in early August to do some serious reflecting and prayer. I will let you know how it goes :-)

A Father Who Keeps His Promises

Just a couple weeks ago, I posted that I was leaving my job on moral grounds. I had no clue where I would be going or what I would be doing. However, I trusted God to take care of me. Yes, I was worried, and yes, I was afraid. But I continued to trust in God. I knew that I was doing the right thing and even if it landed me pennyless and on the streets, I knew it would be for the glory of God.

However, that is so not the case! Within says of my announcement I received calls for interviews. Calls from jobs I had applied to as well as jobs to which I had not applied. I sent my resume to people I knew in the San Antonio Archdiocese and it was not long before my resume was everywhere and I received more interest than I knew what to do with.

I had never applied for a job, had an interview and had an offer in less than a week - let alone two offers! By Wednesday of this week, I had an offer at St. Pius X as their Adult Religious Formation Manager and a second offer at the San Antonio Archdiocese in their Marriage and Family Life Office.

I also had a meeting with the Director of Pastoral Ministries who was so impressed with me that she wanted to create a position for me. However, due to the recession, that was not possible. I followed up on a few other applications I had sent in, they were also very interested but not far enough in the process to make any offers. They asked me if I could hold off a few weeks. Unfortuntely, the offers I had needed answers and I could not wait.

So I took a few days to think it over and weight my options. My decision was not to be based on material things such as money or anything like that. Instead, I based it on where I feel God is calling me.

On the one hand, work in the Parish is very valuable experience and I would be able to directly teach people and, hopefully, help them develop a stronger, more intimate relationship with Christ. On the other hand, the position at the Archdiocese would get my foot in the door and give me the ability to support the very important mission of educating all the faithful in San Antonio on the Catholic Teachings of Marriage and Family Life. Plus I had not applied to this job - it sought me out.

In the end, I chose to go with St. Pius X. When praying about it, I felt that I would be more authentically me in that position - I think I could do the most good there and that God has the most need of me there.

It was with great regret to say no to the Archdiocese, but I do feel like I made the right decision. A decision that I could have only made with a committment to prayer and discerning God's Will.

I am utterly amazed at how quickly this all happened. God certainly keeps His promises and I have no fear that God will continue to provide so long as I continue to discern His will for me, to love Him and to serve Him as well as His people, my brothers and sisters in Christ.

God will Provide

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. I have just been so busy with my many responsibilities. It has been a trying summer to say the least with a Women's ACTS Retreat, forming a New Ministry, planning a Youth 2000 Retreat, singing in multiple choirs, working full time and going to school. It is definately a blessing that I am single woman and have the ability to serve my Church this way.

But I recently had to make a decision to live my faith more fully by standing up for my convictions. My employer recently made a blanket statement to all Planned Parenthoods stating that we support them and followed this with a new program to donate a very large amount of money to them. This on the heels of so many states cutting funding to abortion clinics.

I felt that to continue working there would be a violation of my faith. I have spoken with many people including my priest as well as my spiritual director who both said that I am not committing a sin, but I know it is not healthy for me to constantly have to hide my faith or silence my beliefs. It made me feel like a lie.

So I told my employer of my dilema. Amazingly, they were very understanding and are supporting me in leaving. I am trying to get into Active Church ministry and I have a lot of support from my home Parish and Local Church.

I am not sure what the next few months will hold for my life, but I am convinced that God will provide. Please pray for me and, please feel free to leave your prayer intentions in the comments as I would be honored to pray for you.

God Bless.

All Things for Good...

God uses all things for Good. Isn't this so hard to accept sometimes. How can God use all things for Good? How can He use suffering and pain for Good? I recently learned that He can use it for Good - He showed me how.

You see, I have a hard time dealing with conflict and I can, at times, become overly emotional and act very childish. I have been struggling with this. It is usually so much more intense when I am stressed.

So in the past month, I have been stressed to the max. I cannot remember how long it has been since I got a full 8 hours of sleep. Lately it has been 3-6 hours per night, usually more towards the three hours... I was chastised very harshly by people at Church that caused me a lot of grief and I recently had an incident at work where one of the directors of another department blamed me for something that was not entirely my fault.

This turned into a huge issue that effected multiple people and went all the way up to our CEO. I have pressure from work, from my clients, from my family and from my Church and from myself. Everywhere I have pressure and yesterday I had my first ever panic attack - it was really scary.

So how could any of this be used for Good? Well, today I was in a position where I could have responded negatively. It was a very scary moment for me in which the old me would have either run out of the room in tears or stayed and said very ugly things. But I did not do either. Instead, I was quiet and held my tears in.

I was told later that I handled the situation well. Then I realized that if it had not been for all those people who gave me a hard time, pushed my buttons, threatened me, chastized me and wounded me, I would not have been prepared to handle this one.

But I was prepared. God used all of these things that were so difficult for me, He used them to strengthen me. I can now look back at all these stressors and difficulties over the past few weeks with gratitude because He helped me to be a stronger person and I am much better for it.

Thank you God, for shaping me into a better person. Just like a sword must be tested in fire, so too must I, but it is to make me stronger. Help to always be grateful for everything, even in the face of adversity. I praise you and glorify you in all things, even in my suffering, for I unite my suffering with Your Suffering and I carry my cross with faith, hope and love.

Into your hands I commend my Spirit

"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46)

I think that, perhaps, this last saying of Jesus is the most human thing He said on the Cross. All His other words of forgiveness, salvation, giving, glory, love, and triumph could not have been said without His divinity. Sure, when Thomas was stoned to death, he also echoes Jesus’ first saying, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” But he said this with God’s Grace, which is bestowed upon us in infinite quantity. We just need to accept it.

When Jesus says these last words, He is reuniting Himself to God. He has completed all that He came to do. He has loved us, shown us God’s law, fulfilled the law and the prophets and now He has secured for us eternal life if we choose to accept His gift and all that it entails.

But remember that Christ never said it would be easy. Actually, He said we would be hated, we would have to take up our own crosses. In fact, of the 12 Apostles, I believe that John was the only one who was not martyred. Peter was crucified and legend says that He felt so unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord, so he requested to be crucified upside down!

Look at the lives of other saints that gave up their lives for the faith. What does it mean for these men and women throughout time that they believed this so strongly that they would die for it? What does it mean when Jesus says, “Into your hands I commend my Spirit?”

Yes, in one sense, He is declaring that His time on Earth has ended and He is returning to the Father. But this is so much more than that. Do not forget that Jesus was human too because His sacrifice could only be redeeming for us if He was human. He was true God and True Man. But here, as we saw in Gethsemane was the man.

Do you recall His agony in the Garden? When He cried, so anxious about His pending death, you could almost feel the dread deep within Him. He felt so alone, not even His disciples could stay awake with Him. He sweat blood!

In His agony, He cried out to God to take this cup from Him, but then He submitted to the Lord’s Will. He submitted as the first reflection tells us, because of His love for us.

So then in His last words give us insight as to Who He is as True Man and thus also gives us insight about ourselves.

These words are actually from Psalms 31. In this Psalms, the psalmist laments the evil in the world and speaks of God’s judgment upon them. But he also puts a strong emphasis on trusting God and ends with thanksgiving as He knows that our God is a Faithful God.

In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your justice rescue me.
Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.

For all my foes I am an object of reproach,
a laughingstock to my neighbors, and a dread to my friends;
they who see me abroad flee from me.
I am forgotten like the unremembered dead;
I am like a dish that is broken.

But my trust is in you, O LORD;
I say, “You are my God.
In your hands is my destiny; rescue me
from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors.”

Let your face shine upon your servant;
save me in your kindness.
Take courage and be stouthearted,
all you who hope in the LORD.

Jesus trusts the Father. His own humanity would be a hindrance to that trust just our humanity hinders us. How often do we try to trust God but then we don’t actually leave it in His hands? We try to control the situation so that our wills can be done, not His. But Jesus, in spite of His own human frailties, trusts God. He followed God, with Love in His heart for God and Neighbor, to Calvary where He was nailed to a cross and died for us.

His last words are a testament to His trust for God. “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” The beauty that this was said by Jesus, as Man, dying on the Cross is the fullness of obedience, trust and Love, and we can also trust as He trusts.

We do not have eternal life simply because Jesus died for us. No, it is something we must accept within ourselves by saying yes to Christ, allowing Him to love us and relieving His thirst with our love for Him. It is a choice we must make and this choice leads to actions.

Everything we say and do, think and feel is a reflection of this Choice. We either choose to be His disciples or we do not. We either love God and Neighbor or we do not. We either trust that God has a plan for us and will take care of us, or we do not.

“Always be prepared to give an explanation of the reason for your hope” (1 Peter). We are called to be witnesses to Christ’s love. Many Christians today use the word witness and expect that they can walk into another person’s life, proud and haughty, and convert or transform them. They can be forceful, arrogant and unloving. Not a true witness to Christ’s Love who meets the sinner wherever he or she is at.

But moreover, the Greek word for ‘witness’ is Martyr. And so we are called to be martyrs, as Christ died for love of us, so we, too, die for love of Him. To truly accept Christ as our Lord and Savior means that we accept death, whether it is at a ripe old age or in our youth, whether it is peaceful and serene or agonizing, whether it is a death surrounded by loved ones or death as a martyr of our faith, we accept it and we trust God through it.

But acceptance of our own mortality, however it may come, is not the whole picture. We don’t just say, “yeah, ok, I know I am going to die someday...” No, we accept death meaning that we accept God’s Will for our lives. We can do this by dying to ourselves, our desires and attachments to worldly possessions and living for Him. God will never fail us, He will never abandon us, even when it seems as though He has, He never will. If there is one thing in this world that you can say with absolute certainty, it is that God loves all of us, sinner and saint, and He wants us to be with Him always.
I heard once that original sin was not disobeying God; rather it was not trusting God. Look for a moment at Genesis 3:1-6:

“The serpent asked the woman, ‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’

The woman answered the serpent: ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.'

But the serpent said to the woman: ’You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.’

The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.”

So you see, the serpent had convinced the woman that God did not have the best intentions for her, that she could not trust Him. So then she looked at the fruit with untrusting eyes, seeing what she wanted and no longer placing her trust in God’s love for her.

Life is difficult. We are constantly bombarded with pain and suffering, if not our own, than someone else. We are constantly tempted by greed, lust, material possessions, etc. We live in a world where senseless things happen every day to good people; it is a world where many people say “Why God?” And they don’t understand.

“We know that all things work for good for those who love God”
(Romans 8:28).

Jesus does not call us to pick up our teddy bears and follow Him, He asks us to pick up our crosses which is just a splinter of the cross He carries for us.

No matter what cross He asks you to carry, trust that God gives you that cross for a purpose. Your suffering is for a reason beyond our comprehension today, but will be made clear tomorrow.Christ accepted His death and His final words were a testament to His Trust in the Father. We can join in Christ’s crucifixion by intrusting our spirits into His hands and then, we can have hope that we will also share in His resurrection.

Trust God and if things don’t work out, Trust Him more.

Thank You, Jesus, for becoming incarnate. You could have remained forever in the beauty and glory of your Father’s home but You freely chose instead briefly to visit with us, to live as a humble man, and above all to suffer Your Passion, taking upon Yourself the pain of all our sins, in agony on the Cross giving Your Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity to the Father to reconcile us with Him and open His kingdom for us. You bore all the pain, we got all the gain. What awesome love! What magnificent love! Thank you Jesus! Amen.


I want to thank everyone who has journeyed with me on the reflections of the Seven Last Sayings of Christ. It has been both a challenge as well as a blessing to find the time to reflect, mediditate and write about each saying. I feel like I have really grown in my faith and it is my sincerest hope that you have too. I love each of you for I know that God loves you. I ask Him to bless you at all times, to watch over you and your loved ones and to help you as you continue to grow in Faith.

Pax Christi,
Julia

It is finished

“It is finished” (John 19:30)

What does it mean to finish something? Does it mean that you are done and that you cannot do anymore? That you have died? Or does it mean that you were assigned a task and you have completed it? Was Jesus telling us that He was about to die or was He telling us that He had completed His task?

Well, Jesus did not say “I am finished,” rather, He said, “it is Finished.” So what is ‘it’?

Interestingly, I looked up the Greek word, τετελεσται, which translates to ‘It Is Finished,” could also refer to payment. Perhaps what Jesus was trying to say was “It has been paid.” When humanity first sinned, we all lost paradise. We became sinful people and for our sins, atonement must be made. However, we have fallen and no matter how many good works we do in our lifetime, we will never be good enough to make atonement or payment for our sins.

God is infinitely just and we are judged according to His justice. He says that we must make atonement, but the bail is set too high and we cannot pay it. And so He sent us someone who could. For the only sacrifice that would ever be redeeming enough to make reparations for the whole world would be God’s sacrifice. However, in order for the sacrifice to be able to apply to all of humanity, it had to be a human being’s sacrifice.

God wanted us to be reconciled to Him and so He sent us His only Son to pay the price for our sins. Throughout these reflections, I have demonstrated examples of how some of these sayings allude back to the Old Testament Prophecies. When Jesus says that ‘It is Finished,” He could be referring to His fulfillment of the Scriptures. This perhaps would be the obvious answer. However, I actually came up with something a bit different.

As I reflect upon each of the last sayings of Christ, I seem to approach it in different ways. In some cases, the meditation just comes to me and I write and write until it is written and then I go back and fill in the blanks with supporting documentation. For others, I had general ideas but I read first and then wrote with the insights in mind from what I had read. Then the first reflection was completely mine. It was late at night and I just wrote and posted it, it is primarily spiritual. I thought about adding some academic knowledge to it, but then I thought that maybe this was a good way to get into the mood of the reflections and so I left it.

But of all the reflections, this one has been the hardest. I have been praying on meditating on it since yesterday. Even while writing yesterday’s verse, I still tried to find a good angel on this one so as to try to present new information. I drew blanks and so I tried to research it. Unfortunately, most of the pages I read were anti-Catholic. They were writing to tell the world why we are wrong for celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

I tried to not read too much of these as (1) I do not like their message and (2) I do not agree with their justification. Basically, they say that Jesus said “It is Finished” and so we cannot celebrate His Sacrifice because it only happened once….well, if you believe it the way they explain it, how could Sacrifice be redeeming for all of humanity. If it was localized to that fixed point in history and could not transcend time and space, how could Jesus’ death do anything for you and me 2,000 years later?

Perhaps this is a question best left to professional philosophers and theologians, which one day I hope to be. However, for now, lets look at what Jesus could really have meant when He said, “It is Finished.”

Scripture tells us that Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. So perhaps to understand what He is telling us we should look to the beginning and the end…

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5).

So what does this mean? Does anyone remember reading in Genesis about there being the Word that created life? We recall that God was there and that the Spirit was there (The Mighty Wind and the Breath of God are all symbolic of the Holy Spirit)…but where was the Word?

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light” (Genesis 1:1-3).

God created the Heavens and the Earth and then He began to transform the Earth, first with His Spirit and then with his Words. For from this point forward, God created the sky, the sun, moon, oceans, animals and humanity by speaking. He said it and it happened. God’s word, the Word, created the World. Jesus was there in the beginning creating with Him.

But here is the important thing that we miss out on by not be able to understand the Hebrew style of writing for the Ancient Israelites. They had a verb tense which does not translate today; it is known as the aorist aspect. Basically, it refers to an action that occurs without regard for time. Therefore, what Genesis 1:3 really said was this:

"Then God said, is saying and will say, "Let there be light," and there was, is and always will be light."

But when Jesus said, “It is Finished,” He wasn’t referring to the act of creation as that would have meant that the world ended with His death. So if Jesus was not speaking about creation, perhaps He was referring to His Act of Redemption – but not that “it was finished” for just as God said for there to be light so many millions of years ago and so there is still light today; but because God continues to say, for all time, “let there be light,” so too does Christ’s sacrifice transcend our concept of time. His Sacrifice continues. He sacrificed, is sacrificing and will always sacrifice Himself as the Paschal Lamb for all time so that we (all of Humanity throughout time) can receive His redeeming grace.

Ok, but we still have not determined then what He did mean by saying, “It is Finished,” for that, let’s look at the end.

“The one who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Then he said, ‘Write these words down, for they are trustworthy and true.’ He said to me, ‘They are accomplished. I (am) the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give a gift from the spring of life-giving water. The victor will inherit these gifts, and I shall be his God, and he will be my son’” (Revelation 21:5-7).

The gifts inherited by the victor relate to Revelation 3:21

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, (then) I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me. I will give the victor the right to sit with me on my throne, as I myself first won the victory and sit with my Father on his throne.”

So what is it that is finished? His words are accomplished, which tell us the Truth of who He is and what He promises those who Love him, those whom He has given His Mother, whom He calls the Beloved Disciple and who Thirsts for His Love as He Thirsts for ours. He promises us that Good will overcome evil and that we will be co-heirs with Him in His Kingdom, to sit upon His Throne with Him.

And for good measure, John tells us why he wrote his Gospel in John 20-30-31:

>“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of (his) disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may (come to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.”

Ok, so now that we know what Jesus meant when He said, “It is finished,” let us now look at what that means for us. Because, it is beautiful to know what awaits us in His Kingdom, but Jesus also said that His Kingdom is at hand, as Christians, we are already living in His Kingdom…and so where are His promises? There is still evil in world and I don’t sit on any throne along with Christ…so what gives?

For the answer to this, let us look to Revelation. This Book, also written by John (or so it is commonly accepted that he was the author), is one of the most difficult to understand of all the Books. But the truth is, as Catholics, we already know and understand Revelation because we live it every week..

When Jesus says that “it is finished,” the promises implied from Revelation are directly applicable to us through the Mass and the Eucharist. Let me explain:

There are four main parts of a Mass:

1. Penitential Rite
2. Liturgy of the Word
3. Liturgy of the Eucharist
4. Communion Rite

Our Mass is a Biblical expression of our faith. The Nicene Creed is completely based on Scripture and in Mass, we live our faith. Revelation also tells us of our lived faith. It begins with John brought into Heaven on a Sunday (Revelation 1:10), Chapter 2:5,16,21 begins our Penitential Rite. Also, the first 11 chapters are the readings of the letters to the 12 Churches – this is the Liturgy of the Word.

We are invited to the Liturgy of the Eucharist in Revelation 3:21: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, (then) I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.” However, it actually begins in chapter 11 when Heaven opens up. There is a lot of imagery in the next several chapters, some beautiful and others terrifying.

Chapter 12 tells of the Woman’s child, whom is at war with the Dragon. Then a Lamb is introduced in Chapter 13 and 14. In 14:3, we are told that the Lamb redeems us. In Chapter 19-20, Christ defeats the beast and the dead are judged. Interesting to note that during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we acknowledge Jesus as the Woman’s Offspring as well as the Paschal Lamb and the Christ. The priest prays to deliver us from all evil and we petition the Lamb of God to have mercy on us and to grant us peace.

Finally, Chapter 21 ends with the Communion Rite in which we attend the Wedding Feast of the Lamb with the Bride, the New Jerusalem,. At the same time the New Jerusalem descends from Heaven to unite with the Church on Earth:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, a New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, God's dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them (as their God). He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, (for) the old order has passed away." (Revelation 21:1-4).

It is in verse 6 of this Chapter that Jesus says that His words have been accomplished.

“It is Finished.”

So, do we as Catholics Re-Sacrifice the Lamb? No, we do not. We gloriously participate in the Heavenly Wedding Feast in which we celebrate Jesus’ Sacrifice which is always occurring. When the New Jerusalem descends upon us, we are united with Christ in Heaven. We are outside of time and space on a spiritual level. We are not re-sacrificing Christ on the Cross, but we are standing at the Foot of Cross with Him as His Beloved Disciples, we are with the Paschal Lamb in Heaven celebrating the Wedding Feast and we are on Earth celebrating Mass; all three at the same time.

When we lift up our Hearts, we are truly lifting them up to the Lord and when we sing Hosana (Save Us) in the Highest, we are singing of the Angels in Heaven who are joining their heavenly voices with ours, pleading for our salvation.

But greater still, as the New Jerusalem which descends upon us is outside of time, when we enter it, we are connected to every Catholic Mass throughout time, including the Heavenly Mass – this is the Communion of Saints.

So, as Christ dies on the Cross, as He suffers for us, He still tells us of the Glory He gives us. As we, those who crucified Him as well as those who are beloved by Him, stand there and watch His mortal body die in horrible agony, he uses all His words to tell us of the wonders that await us.

He tells us of our forgiveness, of our place with Him in Paradise, of His gift of His Mother to be our Mother, of His promise for our Resurrection, of His thirst for our Love and now, of the completion of our redemption which is not some far away event at the end of time, but something we can participate in every week…and for some, every day.

As we enter Good Friday, the only day of the Catholic Liturgical Year in which we cannot celebrate Mass, let us contemplate these sayings of Christ. And tonight, when I return from the Good Friday service at my Parish, my New Jerusalem here on Earth, I will post my final reflection on the last words Jesus spoke before he died, “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit” (Luke 23:46)..

Christ humbled himself becoming obedient unto death, even to death on a Cross. Because of this, Our Heavenly Father has exalted him and has bestowed upon him the name that is above every name, so that at the Name of Jesus, every knee should bend of those in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.

We adore your Holy Cross, O Lord, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world. Amen.

Sources:
http://www.nccbuscc.org/liturgy/arinze.shtml
http://www.salvationhistory.com/studies/lesson/supper_heaven_on_earth_the_liturgy_of_the_eucharist
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/revelation_and_the_mass.html
http://www.mycatholictradition.com/catholic-mass.html

I thirst

“I thirst” (John 19:28)

Two weeks ago I felt like going for a run. It was late morning on a Saturday and so I thought it would be cool. I went outside and began my work out. I did not take any water with me and after a while, I realized that it was really too hot to run without being properly hydrated or having water with me. After I was about a mile and a half away from home, I was so thirsty. All I could think about was how thirsty I was, how dry and uncomfortable my mouth felt, how achy my body felt and tired I was.

This was the moment I heard the words, “I thirst,” resound in my mind. I began to contemplate His thirst on the Cross and I realized that I wanted to be thirsty. So I continued to run until I began to feel sick. I was terribly dehydrated when I crossed a small bridge standing over some stagnant water filled with algae and bacteria. Despite how disgusting it looked, all I could think of was my thirst and how much I wanted to drink it. Sure the water would have surely made me sick, but it would have satisfied the aching dryness of my mouth and perhaps cooled me for a time.

I prayed to God to give me the strength to make it home for as far out as I had gone, I still had to turn around to get home. For the reminder of my time outside, I contemplated Christ’s words, “I thirst.” This was when I decided to write these reflections. I made a vow to God to spend my Holy Week reflecting on His Sacrifice for us and how better to do that than reflect on His last words to us on the Cross?

So now I ask you, what did Christ mean when he said, “I Thirst”? It does seem like a strange thing to say. I mean everything else He has said thus far, as I have reflected upon them, have shown us our sinfulness and His redeeming love for us. So do we really think He was just telling us that He was biologically thirsty?

Before we address this question, I want to take a quick detour. The purpose of my blog is to find hope in a world of suffering, and so it would be befitting for me to address this. In Matthew 27:34, we are told that Jesus is given wine mixed with gall before they crucified Him but that He refused to drink it. Gall was actually used to numb pain. He could have taken a deep drink of this so that maybe the pain of the nails driving into His flesh and His tortured body hanging from the Cross would have been dulled. Maybe His crucifixion would not have been so painful; maybe He would not have suffered as much. But He refused to drink it.

What can this tell us about suffering? Christ sacrificed Himself on the Cross for us; He suffered in atonement for our sins. He had to suffer for this great act of redemption. Without human suffering we would not be saved.

With that said, let us return to the reflection on “I Thirst.” There are two very important things going on when Jesus tells us of His Thirst. First is an allusion to the First Passover and please remember that Jesus was crucified on Passover, this was why they broke the knees of the other men and pierced Him with a spear. The men had to be removed and their bodies attended to prior to Passover beginning. So, how does this relate to Passover?

Exodus 12:21-23 says, “Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, ‘Go and procure lambs for your families, and slaughter them as Passover victims. Then take a bunch of hyssop, and dipping it in the blood that is in the basin, sprinkle the lintel and the two doorposts with this blood. But none of you shall go outdoors until morning. For the LORD will go by, striking down the Egyptians. Seeing the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over that door and not let the destroyer come into your houses to strike you down.’”

Psalm 51:7-12

“True, I was born guilty, a sinner, even as my mother conceived me.
Still, you insist on sincerity of heart; in my inmost being teach me wisdom.

Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure;
wash me, make me whiter than snow.

Let me hear sounds of joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Turn away your face from my sins; blot out all my guilt.

A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.”

So what is the connection? Hyssop! Hyssop was used to mark the homes which the destroyer would pass over and then used again to cleanse the Psalmist from his sins. And how is this related to Jesus?

“After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I thirst." There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth” (John 19:28-29).

He said, “I Thirst” in order to fulfill scripture. The Roman guards reacted to His statement by giving Him wine soaked on a sponge upon a sprig of Hyssop. Wine, what we now know to be the Blood of Christ and Christ, the Paschal Lamb. The Blood of Christ, shed to cleanse us of our sins. What an awesome message in two little words!

But there is still another aspect of this that is more beautiful. We know why Christ said He thirsts, but do we know what He thirsted for? Actually, I learned this just recently during my Parish Priest’s homily on The Woman at the Well (John 4). Do you recall that in my reflection on Jesus’ Third Saying, “Woman, Behold your son…” (John 19:26-27), I mentioned that John’s Gospel is also known as the Gospel of Love?

Well, my priest, Fr. Alejandro, was the first to point this out to me. In His homily on the Woman at the Well, he spoke of the woman’s thirst. What was she thirsty for and why could nothing ever satisfy her thirst? She was thirsty for love and she was looking in all the wrong places. Jesus said He could give her a drink of Living Water so that she would never thirst again- The Love of God. Yes, this is also a reference to the Holy Spirit, but one understanding of the Spirit is the He is the Love between the Father and the Son. She thirsts for Love.

Then Fr. Alejandro drew the parallel to Jesus’ Fifth Word, “I Thirst.” What did Jesus Thirst for? What does He still Thirst for? Our Love.

Psalm 69:19-21

You know the insults I receive, and my shame and dishonor; my foes are all known to you. Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair.

I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst
they gave me vinegar to drink.

Another translation of Psalm 69:20 is “I looked for love and I found none.”

He wants our love but instead we give Him vinegar. This reminds me of my thirst when I was running. I wanted cool, clean, sweet water but I was so thirsty, I maybe would have settled for the stagnant water that would have certainly made me ill.

How often do we live our lives searching for love, happiness, success, money, etc.? These things do not lead to true happiness. They are not bad things, but if we make our lives all about obtaining these things and forget He who is true and authentic Joy, than we are doing no better than drinking stagnant water. It will make us spiritually ill.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life”
(John 3:16).

Jesus died on the cross so that we might live, he suffered without accepting the numbing gall, so that He would be sure to feel the pain completely, He suffered without guilt because of His great, absolute and infinite Love for us. Despite that we are ignoring Him, taunting Him, wounding Him and betraying Him, He never stops giving to us.

He gives us Salvation, His Mother, and His never ending Love. All He asks in return is for us to love Him too.

Oh my Jesus, I come into your presence so aware of my human frailty and yet overwhelmed by your love for me. You carried your cross to sacrifice your life to redeem mine because of your love for me.
A love which I do not deserve for all the times I abandoned you
and sought out worldly substitutions for Your Love.

But today I choose to love you with my whole heart, and I ask your pardon, oh Lord, for my sins against you. My Most Beloved Jesus, please forgive me. Please help my love for you to grow more and more every day and teach me to rest in that love.

Please allow me to stand at the foot of the cross with you and to quench your thirst by loving you. You died on the cross for love of me; and so I offer my life to you, My Beloved. To you, oh God, I lift up my soul and
give to you all that I am, but most importantly, I give you my love
and I accept your Love for me.
Amen.

“As long as you do not know in a very intimate way
that Jesus is thirsty for you, it will be impossible for you
to know who He wants to be for you,
nor who He wants you to be for Him.”
- Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta


For additional reflection of Christ's Thirst for our Love, please read Behold the Heart of Jesus that Thirst for souls.

Sources:
http://www.mcpriests.com/03_I_thirst_Shroud_EN.htm
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/library/sacredheart/trulve.htm
http://www.fpclive.org/sermons10/S_Mar21_10.pdf
http://www.biblecenter.com/sermons/sevensayingsfromthecrossithirst.htm