GOOD FRIDAY

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