Are you willing to sell an
organ of your child so you can have money to buy a car? The caveat is that,
this car which costed you of your child’s organ is not even for you or for your child
but for the same person you sold the organ of your own child. Who is in his right
mind will do that? This is absolutely absurd and makes no sense at all. And
yet, God did it today – Good Friday.
Yes, what God has done
today is to offer his own life as the final sacrifice as a ransom for our sins.
He did not just offer an organ or part of Jesus, his own son but his very
life. In Jesus’ time, people are used to offer animal sacrifices to the temple and
depending on the kind of sacrificial offering, they will have to repeat the
offering over some time as they “expire.” Jesus’ blood has become the only
necessary offering to atone for our sins that will last eternally.
What good can come
from a man being nailed to the cross and hung from a tree? If there is one lesson
we must learn from what Jesus did on the cross today is for us to see how far
God will go to show us how much he loves us. In our world today, we have 2 ways
of measuring things. First, by using the objective/universal standard. We
measure things using a universally accepted and verifiable standard like weight,
volume, size, number of hours, market value, depreciated value, etc and all
these have corresponding prices and equivalent trades. Second is the subjective/personal
standard. We measure things by how much it is worth to the giver like, an old
watch given to you by your father or an earring from your mother. The
equivalent trade is not measured by the universal standard. Biblically, the best
example is the widow’s mite who gave two small copper coins. Not much in value
if we measure using the objective/universal standard but more precious according
to the words of Jesus himself because the widow gave everything she has and out
of love for God. Do we measure his love for us on what it’s worth, by regarding
him as a historical figure of the past and his life has nothing to do with us? Or we measure it by how much he means to
us on a personal level?
God did what he did because
he desires our good. He wants us to share in his divine love. Through out
Jesus’ public ministry, he always say “behold, the kingdom of God has come….”
He taught us to pray for the coming of God’s kingdom. This is not God upgrading
his offer of promised land ver. 2. Nor to disregard our earthly life because we
will enter heaven after this miserable life as the new testament version of promise
land. He means we can also have God’s kingdom here on earth and this is characterized
by having peace in our lives. The peace of Christ that the world can’t offer.
Peace can only exist if
love and justice prevail. This is the mission of the Church were all of us
are part of. We show love by feeding the poor, the homeless, visiting
the sick, giving clothes to the naked and by proclaiming the gospel of Christ
through the witness of our lives. We call these the corporal and spiritual
works of mercy. But we also work together so that the poor, the homeless and
vulnerable will have the opportunity to live descent lives by upholding the Church’s
social teachings centered on the dignity of life and preservation of the common
good and we call this our work for justice.
When we look at our world
today, especially the pandemic COVID-19 happening, we can see that God has allowed
a microscopic virus to bring us all to our knees. Regardless how much “self
made money” we have in our bank, how popular we are, how powerful we are, how
politically connected we are or how prestigious our corporate title is, we realize
that all those don’t matter. This is not about who we are and what we have done
or what we can do. This is not about how good we are. This is not about us.
Our charity and works of
justice are not our participation on the redemption of the world. We don’t
need to save the word, Jesus did that for us today. We do these not because God
needs us, but all these we do because we need God. “There we shall rest and
see, we shall see and love, we shall love and praise. Behold what will be at
the end without end. For what other end do we have, if not to reach the kingdom
which has no end?” St. Augustine
God is alive, he loves us not
because we are good but because he is good. Blessed the name of the Lord!
#lent2020
