[What follows is a Lenten
Reflection written by Father Darr Schoenhofen that
he shared with the Parishes of Saint Malachy in Sherburne and Saint Theresa in
New Berlin, New York on April 1, 2020. He has given me permission to share it
with my readers.
Father speaks the Truth
with clarity and a needed sense of urgency. He reminds us why Jesus weeps and then asks: Do We?
This reflection is well worth
reading, pondering and sharing far and wide. I was unable
to reproduce the image of our crucified Lord that Father used. I substituted
another.]
For God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life. For
God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world may
be saved through him.
— JN 3:16-17
Dear Friends in Christ, Beloved Parishioners,
For God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life. For
God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world
may be saved through him.
— JN 3:16-17
Before the Second Vatican
Council, the Sunday before Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, was known
as Passion Sunday. It began a week of
readings at Mass that focused on the proximate events that led to our Lord’s
Passion. The Gospel text for that Sunday
was JN 8: 4659. Commentating on this
text, Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., wrote in his now classic
book, DIVINE INTIMACY:
The Gospel [text] narrates an
instance of the pressing hostility of the Jews, an evident prelude to the
Passion of Jesus. In their hardened
hearts they had absolutely refused to acknowledge the mission of the Savior; as
a result, they schemed in a thousand ways to oppose His teachings and to
belittle Him before the people by declaring Him a liar and one possessed by the
devil.
It is important to note
that not all of the Jews were hostile to Jesus, but many in Jerusalem were, and
on Good Friday this group, a maddening crowd, clamored publicly along with the
Sanhedrin to Pontius Pilate to have Jesus crucified. The CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH (CCC)
reminds us that Jews collectively are not responsible for Jesus’ death:
The personal sin of the participants
(Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence, we cannot lay responsibility for the
trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of the
manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles’ calls to
conversion after Pentecost. Jesus
himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in following suit, both accept
“the ignorance” of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their leaders. Still less can we extend responsibility to
other Jews of different times and places . . . (CCC, 597).
Who, then, bears
responsibility for Jesus’ torture and ignominious death on the cross? The Church’s answer is clear:
In her magisterial teaching of the
faith and in the witness of her saints, the Church has never forgotten that
“sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the
divine Redeemer endured.” Taking into
account the fact that our sins affect Christ himself, the Church does not
hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torments
inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often
burdened the Jews alone (CCC, 598).
The CATECHISM,
in that same paragraph text (598), goes on to quote Saint Francis of Assisi.
We must regard as guilty all those
who continue to relapse into their sins.
Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross,
those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God
anew in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt. And it can be seen that our crime in this
case is greater in us than in the Jews.
As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, “None of the
rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have
crucified the Lord of glory.” We,
however, profess to know him. And when
we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him.
Nor did the demons crucify him; it is
you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your
vices and sins.
How bitterly ironic that
some of the Jews of Jerusalem, enraged at Jesus by the devil, a liar and the
father of all lies, accused Jesus of being a liar and possessed by a demon; and
how much more bitterly ironic and utterly tragic that to this day so many
Christians, by their grave, unrepented sins committed under the insidious sway
of the devil, in effect make out Jesus (whom with their lips they profess to be
Lord) to be a liar and so crucify him anew in their hearts.
*
* * * * * *
For God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life. For God sent the Son into
the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world may be saved through
him. — JN
3:16-17
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