FOR THE SAKE OF THE JOY WHICH LAY AHEAD OF HIM

"Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which lay ahead of him, he endured the cross, disregarding the shame of it, and has taken his seat at the right of God's throne" (Hebrews 12:2).

What is the joy that lay ahead of Jesus? It is the joy of completing his task well, fulfilling the will if his Father, and happily rejoining the Father. Having endured the most ignominious ill-treatment, and having remained steadfast and faithful through this painful passion, Jesus rejoiced: "It is finished!" and bowed his head and surrendered his spirit in death (John 19:30).

He had consummated his mission without wavering or faltering through all the opposition, betrayal, rejection, and various persecution. That is what filled him with joy. This joy was driving him on, bolstering him, galvanizing and strengthening him through the most difficult moments of the passion.

That joy was inside him all the time, even when he appeared defeated. He shares that joy, thereby revealing it to us, when he intimates it to the good thief: "Truly, truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23:43). Jesus knew, beyond all reasonable doubt that at the end of his suffering was Paradise.

He knew this because he trusted his Father. He knew that, even if his Father had seen it to be necessary for Jesus to suffer this much, God would not go back on his word. God had prepared this glory for him from the beginning and Jesus was determined not to allow any earthily hardship, or human cruelty and evil, or his own human frailty to prevent him from attaining this glory.

He had prayed earnestly before the passion: "Now, Father, glorify me with that glory I had with you before ever the world existed." (John 17:5).

By suffering and dying for us Jesus secured this glory for us too. No matter what blows we receive from this imperfect world, the cruelty and evil intentions of our persecutors, and our own weakness and vulnerability, we must remain faithful to the Father's will, like Jesus did.

We must pray always like him when we find it most difficult: "'Father,' he said, 'if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine.'" (Luke 22:42). That is how Christians, followers of Jesus, must face trials and tribulations, following the example of Christ, preferring the will of a God to our own will.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews encourages us: "Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which lay ahead of him, he endured the cross, disregarding the shame of it, and has taken his seat at the right of God's throne" (Hebrews 12:2).

Dear sisters and brothers, for the sake of the joy which lies ahead of us, let us not conform to the standards of this world, to the mentality of this time, to the values of society, to the hardships of our personal predicament; but let us remain resolute in doing God's will, steadfast in prayer, unwavering in faith and always rejoicing in the love of Jesus Christ! Amen.

The Passion of the Christ

I like the depiction in The Passion of the Christ, of the impression that the passion of Jesus had on the woman caught in adultery. 

She watches him go through, what she almost certainly went through, at the hands of her accusers. 

She was spared this ordeal by him. 

She now watches, helplessly, unable to save the one who saved her. 

How she must have wanted to do for him what he did for her, but she could not. 

How that must have torn her deep inside. 

It is as if she is seeing this, in play back, happening to her. 

It is as if she is seeing all this in a dream. 

But this is not a dream - it's real - and it is not happening to her because he stopped it happening to her. 

I, too, see in the passion of Jesus, what could have happened to me had Jesus not stood in for me.

Contemplating the face of Oscar Pistorious

I watched a bit of the Oscar Pistorious trial today. Among other things I am fascinated by the faces of the audience. You hear Oscar's trembling and highly emotionally charged voice, crackling out of his face that is hidden from you. You can't see his eyes. You can't see him purse his lips and lick them to moisten them. But you can hear, if you listen hard, his tongue pulling back, working desperately, as if independently of him, to keep his mouth moist. And you see the faces of those whose gaze is fixed on his face. They are all set like flint, hard, unflinching, unmoving. The sculpture pose of the faces is only momentarily upset by the rapid blinking of the eyes. You look harder into those faces, searching, screening, hoping to pick up the slightest movement that can reconfirm for you that they are actually humans, that they are still human beings. These faces belong to people who, by choice or for duty's sake, are forced to sit in there, saying nothing, watching and not even in any way able to determine the out come, or influence the course of the trial. There are there, wearing these unflinching faces, now and again mirroring to us what the face of Oscar might be looking like. As I study these faces, and allow them to distract me from the actual words of the trial, as the eye of my mind tries to imagine the contours of the face of Oscar, I keep asking myself: To what avail?