No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life
for one’s friends. Christ laid down his life for us while we were still sinners.
But Christ did not only die. Christ let himself be tortured, beaten, nailed to
a tree - and in doing so He took on our wounds. Through the cross God carries
our wounds eternally. As Jesus tells us at the Last Judgement, Christ became our
wounded. Christ says to us I am the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the
naked, the sick, and the prisoner. And all of these among us are held in the
holes in the Resurrected Jesus’ hands and feet and side.
It is how we treat these wounds that matters. As many
religious have observed, in the Beatitudes Christ not only blesses, but
instructs us to be the poor, the mourners, the meek, the merciful, the pure in
heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. And how can our hearts not mourn all
the walking wounded in whom we find Christ? How can we not be humbled by God’s
own humility in becoming them? How can we not redistribute our wealth in light
of this as the Christians did in the book of Acts? How can we not seek the
peace of Christ for the afflicted Christ among us? How can we not risk
persecution in loving as abjectly as Christ has? For it is abject love that we
see upon the cross today.
