In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What are words before the image of the death of God? How can we, for yet another year, crack open again this mystery and meditate on the Man of sorrows, who bleeds and dies so that our sorrow and sighing will finally and forever flee away? What shall we say to betrayal by one of His own Twelve? What shall we say again this year that has not been said a hundred times before? The problem is not that we have exhausted all the words, but that our words are incomplete, incompetent, incapable of comprehending what, exactly, is going on when Jesus hangs on the cross. It is as much a mystery as the fact that Jesus is fully and truly God and, at the same time, fully and truly a man. It is as much a mystery as the fact that with water, the Word of God joins sinners to His cross and resurrection, or that with bread and wine, His very body and blood are eaten and drunk. None of these things can be explained; they can only be believed, or not; and the God who does them only worshiped, or denied.

Continue reading →