REFLECTIONS ON OUR REDEMPTION 7 - THE PASSION IN LOCKDOWN

We are very grateful to Father Joseph Hamilton, Chaplain of the Australian Association, for this meditation. We are truly spoilt, and not short of material to assist us in a correct supernatural use of our time in enforced isolation. Fr Hamilton is well-known as a friend to many in our Order from the days of the Easter liturgies in our Conventual Church. He is currently living in Oxford with the Oratory Fathers while doing his PhD at Christ Church.

The talk is available either as text below or to be listened to in this video. Since there has been much to read over these days, we would encourage people to listen to this some time in the afternoon of Good Friday.

We commemorate this Good Friday ‘in lockdown’, as a society, as a Church, and as an Order. When the current crisis passes, all three will re-emerge into a changed world. For the spiritual sons and daughters of St John the Baptist, we know that as long as we have remained true to our charism and through the intercession of our Order’s Saints and Blesseds, that God will order all things for us  in this changed world.  Hence the emphasis in the in the prayer of the Order to remain true to the traditions of Our Order—that which has been passed down—traditio. Because without our traditions, without our charism, without liturgy, without a conventual culture rooted in the worthy celebration of all the sacraments, we become just a social order.  Which means that when a social crisis occurs, we have nothing to offer that is supernatural to society and we become irrelevant.  This good Friday we must be particularly on our guard against the de-supernaturalisation of the Order.  The 8-pointed cross that identifies us can only shine out in the world if it is super-illuminated by the Power of the Holy Spirit. That can only happen when we, in all humility, like Our Lord, nobly accept the sufferings and the joys that the charism brings to us...

In the sufferings of the lockdown Our Lord, as in all things has gone before us. Not far from the walls of the old city of Jerusalem archaeologists have excavated the remains of the High Priest’s House, over which is built the church of St Peter in Gallicantu, and underneath the Church is a cell, the dungeon where Christ was held the night before His Crucifixion. This morning as I was praying the Office of Tenebrae, I found my mind wandering to what that night must have been like for Our Lord. His face had already been pretty badly bashed up, and must have been greatly paining him. I doubt that he slept. I wonder whether His mind went back to happier days in the Green Hills of Galilee (Galilee is very green) and the fraternity of his disciples, or maybe his home in Nazareth, and His mother, His mum. Maybe He found Himself thinking about all those He had healed, maybe His mind had turned to just a few days earlier, the cries of Hosanna. Perhaps in His Divinity he was contemplating the redemption of so many souls, and the loss of others. The truth is we will never know. I am sure like me you wish that there is some way you could console Him ….

We are the spiritual sons and daughters of the Saint John the Baptist. Our patron had a similar passion, a longer lockdown, confined in the dungeons of Herod, in the stinking heat of the Dead Sea Basin, awaiting execution.  I wonder where his thoughts drifted …. to his mother Elizabeth … or perhaps to that incredible day on the banks of the Jordan, when he saw the full splendour of the Trinity descend upon his cousin? Our patron, fearless defender of the faith, of the moral law, of the reality of sin and forgiveness, locked down. Just like us. Today is a good day to ask, are we faithful to the charism he has entrusted to us?

What we do know is this, that the Son of God was about to embark on nine hours of torture and agony. He had already been beaten around the face, now he was taken to be scourged. The traditional Jewish scourging would have consisted of 39 strokes, shredding the skin of the back exposing the musculature and skeleton underneath, with many victims dying in the process. The resulting blood loss, shock, and dehydration would have already severely weakened Jesus. The carrying of an 80 pound cross through the streets of Jerusalem, in his already weakened state must have been almost impossible. St. Bernard of Clairvaux is said to have asked the Lord which of his wounds pained him he most to which the Lord replied:

“I had on My Shoulder while I bore My Cross on the Way of Sorrows, a grievous Wound that was more painful than the others, and which is not recorded by men. Honor this Wound with thy devotion, and I will grant thee whatsoever thou dost ask through its virtue and merit. And in regard to all those who shall venerate this Wound, I will remit to them all their venial sins and will no longer remember their mortal sins.” 

And so the long road to Calvary continued. 

Along the way he meets the women of Jerusalem, and makes a dire prophecy: Weep not for me. Less than 40 years later on the 8th day of the Jewish month of Ab, Titus was preparing the storming of the Temple. Jerusalem was besieged. The city’s Christians had left before the Roman ring of steel had encircled it. The following day was the 500th anniversary of the destruction of the city by the Babylonians. The starved residents of the city that saw the death of prophets and the Messiah, as Flavius Josephus puts it, a place of barbaric madness, gangs of criminals stealing what food there was, torturings and killings. The next morning the city was ablaze. Titus himself entered the burning Temple and violated the Holy of Holies. The Romans heaped the bodies of slaughtered Jews, 10,000 of them around the altar of the most famed Temple in the ancient world. In the temple treasury rooms the Romans found 6,000 women and children taking refuge. All died. Jerusalem and its temple was destroyed. The Lord foresaw it all. 

They reach the place of His execution. The stripping of his garments must have been particularly painful for Jesus. The fabric of his robe would have dried in into the exposed, bloody flesh opened by the scouring, and would have had to be ripped off him.  As for crucifixion itself— crucifixion itself caused death by asphyxiation, and by all accounts was one of the most humiliating, shameful, as well as agonising modes of execution the ancient world could devise. Why, I ask you, why the treachery, why the insults, why the blows, why the savage violence, the death, why all the very worst aspects of our fallen humanity put on display in the drama of the passion? There is only one answer. Love. Not the fleeting romantic love of Eros, or even that of Agape, no the Love that is poured out for us today is the Love that called the very universe into being, and gave birth to the first star, the Love that created the angels and was betrayed, the Love that created humanity and could not bear to leave us in our fallen state.  So this Love descended to Earth, was born at Bethlehem with one purpose only, to take on our sins, and to die for them, so that as Love’s life was poured out on the cross, the rivers of grace streaming out of His wounds could redeem us. Not just cover us, as the Protestant confessions suggest, but really transform us, and in doing so, open up the gates of Heaven. The death of Christ on the Cross is an equivalent cosmic to the Fall of Humanity in the Garden of Eden, and so it is accompanied by an earthquake, and an eclipse, and the rending of the veil of the temple.  The Cross transforms us, and in a very specific way. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, because of Christ’s sufferings, our own sufferings and sacrifices in this world torn apart by sin, have meaning and merit. If we unite our sufferings to those of Christ on the cross, then really quite amazing things can begin to happen in our lives.  If we unite the sufferings of Our Order to His, we can bring about genuine renewal.

Brethren, we did this to Christ. Our sins did this to Christ. Look at how Our lord has lived His last 24 hours. Totally for us. How do we live our lives? Totally for Him? Or totally for ourselves? He who has given us so much, asks such a little thing in return. He only asks that we love Him. This Good Friday is that really such an enormous thing to ask?

The liturgy today reflects all these things, the Church is stripped of Her beauty, the organ is silent, the tabernacle is empty. And this year, she is stripped even of the presence of the people of God. In Church today you would have heard the Passion sung, and the great intercessions for the Church and the World. Then you would have come forward to adore the Cross. This is something you can still do at home. I encourage you to do so. 

When you adore the Cross today I invite you to bring your wounds, your sufferings to the Lord. We all have them. We all have hurts. We have all hurt people and we all have been hurt by people. Bring your wounds to the Cross today and unite them to those of Our Lord’s. Let His strength help you to carry your crosses. The events of the first Good Friday were transformational for the entire Universe. In the same way the events of this Good Friday can be transformational for each one of us. Jesus’s great sacrifice of transcends time and space and the Divine Mercy which poured out from the wounds on his side transcend any possible injury, sin or evil that we might perpetrate. Pray today for the renewal of Our Order. That the errors and wounds of the past might be washed clean in the blood and water streaming from His side. 

Our Lord appeared to St Bridget of Sweden, and showed her the completeness of His Passion while she was praying in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He revealed to her that he received over 5,000 blows to His Body during His Passion, and taught her fifteen prayers to which he attached great promises if someone were willing to recite them every day for an entire year. Since last July thirty members of Our Order have anonymously been praying those prayers for all of you, for the renewal of our Order, and our Order family.  Our Lord revealed to St Albert the Great and St Augustine that nothing is more profitable for souls than to meditate upon His Passion. Today you join those 30 members in the prayer honouring Our Lord’s Passion. Perhaps you might remember them today as well, and thank the Lord for them, and for their hidden prayers for all of you.

Today, Christ was made obedient of for us, even to death on a cross. We are locked down. We understand in perhaps a more poignant way this year, the desolation of the Tomb. But the Lord’s victory awaits, and is offered to all those who follow Him. We will re-emerge, and when we do, may it be in such a way that the world and the Church see the splendour of our charism shine out once more. 

Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, 

mortem autem crucis.