Bound in Love

Into your hands I commend my spirit.

Lk 23:46

Jesus has completed his mission. He has redeemed humanity from its Original Sin. His redemption is not limited to the children of Israel but is offered to all who will accept his invitation.

Jesus has established the New Passover, the new exodus from enslavement to death into the promised land of eternal life. In his Passion, he has established the memorial liturgy to be continued on Earth until he returns in judgment and glory at the end of time. He is the Lamb of God, the saving victim. By his death on the Cross, we are saved.

Every time we come to the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, we offer an unbloody sacrifice of bread and wine because he told his Apostles that by the power of His word bread and wine would become his body and blood. Our Sunday sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in the Mass brings us back to this day when Jesus offered his human body and blood on the Cross to save us all.

Here, at the moment of his death, he prays the 31st Psalm with confidence and hope. “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” With his last breath, Jesus announces to all that he is going home to the Father.

Am I ready for the moment of my death? Are you? Jesus prepared for this moment his entire earthly life. He came at Christmas to die on Good Friday and rise on Easter Sunday. He announced to John the Baptist his mission from inside Mary’s womb at the Visitation. The angels sang his praise and wise men from the East did him homage at the Nativity. Simeon declared him a “revelation to the gentiles and glory to the people of Israel” at the Presentation. He conversed with the scribes and elders as a boy of twelve years old. He revealed his true glory to Peter, James, and John at the Transfiguration, where they heard the voice of the Father. He announced to his disciples that he would go to Jerusalem to die. And now, at the hour of his death, he speaks confidently of his Father’s love and his love for his Father.

Our heavenly Father loves us just as much. He wants to hear us commend our lives into his hands. At the very end of his life, Jesus hands himself over to God the Father. That is our mission, too. To hand ourselves over to our heavenly Father on our day of death. It’s why he came at Christmas. To die for us.

Our whole life should be about preparing for our death, just as Jesus showed us with his life. This is not something that’s just for old people. Jesus was 33 when he died. He spent his whole life on earth preparing for his death. His death was triumphant, and soon we will experience the amazing joy of His Easter Resurrection. But there is no path to Easter that does not include Good Friday. Jesus had made the necessary sacrifice with his life to receive his heavenly crown.

He is the model for us. We are called to spend our lives preparing for life after death. We are made in God’s image. That means we have eternal souls. This makes our earthly lives so important, for they determine where we will remain for eternity. Will we accept heavenly crowns or spend eternity in bitterness completely separated from him?

The prophet Isaiah speaks of Jesus on the Cross today when he describes the Suffering Servant in chapter 53:

But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.

And now the suffering has come to an end. The New Passover has been established, and the new memorial liturgy that replaces the Seder meal will be the Mass.

The sacrifice was the sacrifice of the suffering servant. The servant suffered mightily for the sins of others. Jesus has suffered for our sins. Jesus has taken on all the sins of every man, woman, and child that has ever been born or ever will be born. He has carried all that suffering with him on the cross today.

The sacrifice is finished, but suffering is not. Each of us has experienced suffering, and each of us will surely experience more suffering before we die. The model of Jesus on the Cross is a model for us how to use the suffering in our lives. Suffering is one way we can grow in hope. Hope is the sure confidence that God has a plan for us in our specific circumstances, and that the plan is a good plan. It is how we commend our spirits into his hands.

The pain of suffering is real pain. Sometimes it’s physical pain that comes from bodily injury or sickness. Sometimes that condition is chronic, and we carry the pain and the suffering with us right up until the day that we die. Just as Jesus died carrying the wounds of the whipping and the crown of thorns, we may be asked to carry the wounds of our suffering all the way to the end.

The goodness of Good Friday is the realization that this suffering has redemptive power. This is redemptive suffering. One of the greatest gifts of the Catholic faith to its people is the understanding that suffering has a purpose, and it is a good purpose. Everything our Father gives us is for our good, even suffering.

Jesus suffers on his way to reunion with his father. Our suffering is part of the way that we reconnect and stay connected to our loving father. It helps us commend our lives into his hands. Our father made us to be with him. That is his deepest desire. But we wander from him. And out of love, he will use suffering to guide us back towards him.

Suffering without God is mindless brutality. Suffering with God is a gift for our spiritual and emotional growth. The disciples followed Jesus for three years of his earthly ministry. And today, all but one abandoned him at his moment of greatest suffering. And all but one will die as martyrs, living witnesses to the power of Christ. For their own good, these apostles needed more suffering to come to the place of spiritual union with God. God, who loves his apostles and loves us, gave those apostles what was truly good for them even though it involved pain and suffering. God gave them what they needed to be able to say what Jesus said at the hour of their deaths. He does the same with us.

The suffering that we endure in our lives will eventually end. The opportunity we are offered throughout our lives is a choice about how to respond to it. Will we run from it, as the apostles ran from the cross? Or will we run to it, as the same apostles ran to their own crosses? Do we see through the pains of suffering to the purpose and the gift inside?

Suffering can only be a gift if we trust our heavenly father as Jesus trusted his father. All the words from the cross are spoken by a son who trusts his father. Trusting his father, Jesus does not rush to judge his persecutors. Trusting his father, Jesus continues to offer the good news even to the thieves being killed next to him. Trusting his father, Jesus gives his mother to his disciples. Trusting his father, he prays the Psalms of the suffering servant. Trusting his father, he commends his spirit into his father’s hands. Having done all that, he brings the suffering and his sacrifice to its glorious end.

“Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.” –St. Rose of Lima

Apart from the cross, we cannot commend our lives into his hands.