I Am Killing Christ Today

A few days ago, Franciscan University of Steubenville put on a passion play/living stations with students filling all the roles. I went, because many of my friends were in it. My brother was a centurion who beat Jesus, my friend Joseph was the bad thief, my friend Clarke was Pilate, my friend Brian was Simon of Cyrene, Milana was a woman of the crowd who hurled insults at Christ, and my friend Salvador (there’s an ironic name for ya) was Jesus.

It. Was. Horrible.

Not the play, because that was performed beautifully, but the actions. I saw my brother kicking my friend, saw my closest friends hurling insults and condemning someone I knew was innocent, screaming like demons and sadistically kicking a man who was on the ground. I saw a good man who is always very modest and well-dressed, who gives fist bumps in the hallway and never has a mean thing to say to anyone, be stripped to a loincloth and nailed (tied) to a cross by my own brother. Yes, it was all fake. But this drove a point home to me that I’d never actually understood before. Because see, this play proved to me that all the people of the passion? Yeah, they’re all us.

My friends and I are capable of condemning Christ to death when we can’t be bothered to stand up for what’s really true and beautiful. We’re capable of insulting Him and spitting at Him when we decide to sin, knowing exactly what the cost of our sin is on Him. We’re capable of ridiculing Him for possibly thinking that suffering could be good, of laughing at His humility and acceptance even as we’re hanging on our own crosses right next to Him. Every day we nail Him onto the cross and then demand He come down from it just to prove to us that He can, demanding signs and wonders to prove that He’s real as we torture Him for not being exactly the way we want Him to be. We are every character in this grand Passion. His blood is upon us and on our children, not just on some dusty Jews from thousands of years ago.

It is easy to sin when you’re alone and the consequences of it aren’t directly affecting you. But I got to see a friend of mine be hurt, albeit in a fake way, for something that the narrator said I had done. If that hurt me, how much more should the reality of the crucifixion hurt me? How much more remorse should I feel for the actual events, when the play with actors who would shower off the fake blood and put back on their normal clothes in an hour brought me to tears? When I choose to sin, I am knowingly beating and stripping and killing my friend like the Roman guards. When I yell at God for abandoning me and demand a sign that He’s still around, I am the bad thief and the Pharisees. When I allow a friend to do what I know is wrong because I don’t want to rock the boat, I am Pilate, washing my hands of the death of Christ yet still completely culpable for it (to the point where he is remembered by name in the Creed!) And so are you. So are we all.

There is no reason for God to do this. We do not deserve this. We are so wretched, so utterly hopeless, so completely undeserving of the grace of the Passion. We can talk about how much God loves us til we’re blue in the face, but we all have to realize that, because of what we do to Him, we don’t deserve an ounce of mercy. If God were a human, He’d be within His rights to smite all of us, or to turn His back and never acknowledge us again. But God was a human, and He didn’t. He chooses to love us and chase us anyway, as completely worthless as we are. That’s what mercy means. How dare we have pride and see God’s mercy as something to take for granted, something we deserve? How dare we act like we wouldn’t do exactly the same thing as those people in Jerusalem in 33 A.D.?

This Lent of the year of mercy has been, for me, a time of intense meditation on the mercy of Christ. In order to need the infinite mercy of God, we need to realize how intensely wretched we are. We need to know exactly what we’re capable of: murdering someone who loves us and doing it on a daily basis. God’s mercy is the only thing that can make us able to live with ourselves once we’ve realized what we’ve done to Him.  I’ve been broken this year, and it’s nothing compared to what Christ suffered, for all that, in my pride, I’ve thought it was as bad. But He offered me mercy, and, in that mercy, I can come back to Him.

May you all have a blessed Triduum and Easter Season!

Love to all!

-Tani

 

A Tale of Two Brothers and a Father Who Loves Them: The Lukewarm Brother

Welcome to Holy Week! It’s that greatest week of the Church year when we must confront ourselves in all our capacity to reject God, and then overcome that rejection and run back to Him even as He comes to us. With that in mind, I’m bringing in a dear friend, Kyle George, to give us two guest posts on the parable of the prodigal son to meditate on this week.

 

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

 

The Story of the Prodigal Son is one that always speaks to my heart not because of the typical interpretation of a wayward son squandering his inheritance on sinful ways of living only to be forgiven when he returns home to his father. It speaks to my Catholic Faith. Especially, concerning the two brothers. I will concentrate this writing on the older brother who is consistently seldom talked about, yet he can teach us so much about our Catholic faith.

The next writing will be on the younger brother and his father.

 

A prodigal is a person who recklessly spends their money on lavish ways of living. Like the younger brother, the older had all that he needed to be happy, yet he neither spent it recklessly nor appropriately. He never took advantage of the good that he had from his father for his benefit. He toiled and labored on his father’s land. He followed the rules, but took his good life for granted becoming lukewarm. The oldest brother is the Catholic who knows the goodness of the faith. They know the rules. They know the teachings enough to take them for granted. At least the younger brother could be given some benefit of the doubt for not really knowing the good that he had or how to use it well. The older brother knew very well, but never used it for any reason good or bad. It’s a horribly grave tragedy to know you have a gift and squander it because you don’t know how to use it well. It’s an even worse tragedy to know you have a gift, know that you can use it, but never even try to use it at all.

So, often in my Catholic life I have heard stories of my fellow Catholic brethren not taking their faith seriously. I have seen so many fall into complacency in their faith. I did not become Catholic to watch my people, who I chose to participate in this faith that I love, squander this great gift of being Catholic because they do not know the beauty of it! The Catholic Church is the greatest means of salvation. The Catholic Church is the fullness of truth. She, and only She, is completely united to the Son and guided by the Holy Spirit to lead us to the Eternal Father who spoke us into being from the dust through the Word (His Only-Begotten Son) and breathed life into us by the Holy Spirit so that we can have eternal life through following the fullness of truth (the Catholic Faith) to get there. If any Catholic actually fell in love with the faith because someone convinced them in their heart that they should care about knowing what She offered in Her truth, then they would be a Saint.

The sin of the older brother is that while he had all that he needed to be happy, he never took advantage of it. He never loved His father enough to use what his father had for his good. God has so much for us to use for building up the good in ourselves enough so that by our holy living we can in turn help others become holy. Each of us is uniquely gifted and God gives us the Church, Her Sacraments (especially, Confession and the Eucharist), Her Saints, and Her Doctrines to become perfect as Her Heavenly Father is perfect. Her goal is to make us more like God. That is why the Son became man. By His taking on a human nature while still maintaining His Divine Personhood we could one day have a perfect human nature well enough to participate in the Divine Personhood of the Triune God. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 460.) Her goal is that we can embrace the Father, because He is our Father too. We must be bold enough to ask for His graces (His gifts) using it for the benefit of becoming Holy so that the world may know the love and goodness of God. That way no one can possibly take their faith for granted like the older son nor squander it like the younger son in wayward living.

For I became Catholic to become Holy. I became Catholic because I love it. So, love it. She is the truest means of salvation. All the Father has given through His Only-Begotten Son is yours. So, take advantage of the grace of the Holy Spirit to do good things in this life so that you can be supremely happy in the next.

 

 

Kyle George is a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of New Orleans studying at Notre Dame Seminary. He enjoys writing about spirituality, love, and how to be a better Catholic.

Love to all!

-Tani