 Good morning. Who's having a good conference so far? It is such a delight to be back here. I was a student, and even before I was a student, I was one of you that came to the, the Steubenville Conferences in the early 1990s. I brought youth groups here. I came for defending the faith. And I know it was a huge part of my own renewed encounter as a young adult with our Lord Jesus Christ and our Catholic faith. It's an incredible blessing for me. And it's been a delight to be able to come back and serve now as one of the presenters for a number of years here. So my prayers are with you all. I pray that like Father Pawanka mentioned last night, this is like a retreat for you, that you go deeper. I taught, I was at breakfast this morning with some of the attendees, and they described it as like a study retreat. They're trying, I'm trying to take all these notes but then I can pray about it and apply it to my life. And so that, that's my hope for all of you. As we get into this topic here this morning, I have a question for you. Does anyone want to go to Rome? I want to take you to Rome right now. You're right, I want to take you back to Rome and I take you near the Palatine Hill, near where I used to live when I studied in Rome, close to the Coliseum area there in the Roman Forum. And I want to talk about the earliest depiction of Jesus Christ crucified, the earliest depiction of the crucifixion. And what's fascinating is that this depiction was done not by a Christian but it was done by a pagan who was mocking the Christian belief in a crucified God. And I want to show you that image but I need to get my clicker that I left over here, I think. Is anyone see the, here it is. Okay, here we go. So this shocking graffiti-like image has Jesus on the cross with the face of a donkey. And underneath it is this stick figure of a Christian man, a Roman Christian, whose name is Alexaminus, and it says, Alexaminus worships his God. And I love this image because it kind of wakes us up as Christians here in the 21st century where we're so used to seeing crucifixion scenes in our churches, we wear crosses as jewelry, we have crosses in our homes and our living rooms and our kitchens, and yet we can sometimes forget just how shocking the idea of Jesus Christ crucified really was. The Roman orator Cicero once said that not only should the idea of crucifixion be far removed from the body of any Roman citizen, but even just the thought, the word cross, should be far removed from our minds, from our memory, from our words. Just not even think about this, it's so horrifying. That's why St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter one, verse 24, that Jesus Christ crucified is a stumbling block to the Jews, the Jews who were expecting this great Messiah figure to come and liberate them from their enemies. And then they see Jesus claiming to be the Messiah and yet he's crucified at the hands of the Roman enemies. It's a stumbling block for the Jews, but it's complete folly to the Gentiles and yet in truth, in reality, it is the wisdom of God. And it's that wisdom of God that I would like us to explore here today. I wanna look at how the cross reveals true wisdom. I wanna look at particularly certain vignettes from Christ's passion accounts and the passion narratives of the Gospels. And I wanna just walk through with Jesus from Gethsemane to his trial, to the caring of the cross, and ultimately to Calvary. And I wanna look at different vignettes, stories that we've all heard about many of us from our childhood, but I wanna look at them anew with fresh eyes to see how the cross is revealing the fullness of God's love. In fact, that's what St. John Paul II once said, that when we look at the cross, we have the fullest revelation of love. We have the fullest revelation of God, but we also have the fullest revelation of man and what we are called to, the kind of love that God has made us for, where we can find true wisdom for our own lives today. But with that, I know we started with a prayer, but would you mind one more on this Saturday, especially? I'd love to call on our lady, if we could say a Hail Mary together. Oh, that's right, it's Thursday, but it's still okay to call on our lady, even on a Thursday morning, let's pray. In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. So I wanna walk through, we'll see how much time we have, but at least five points from Christ's Passion. I'm gonna walk through five different scenes, five moments, and look at how they open up for us this revelation of God's love. But before we get there, let's just talk a little bit about the Passion itself. Why do we call these accounts in the Gospels the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ? Why is it called Passion? Well, the word Passion in English is derived in the Catholic tradition from the Latin word passio, meaning suffering. So it's referring to the suffering that Christ endured for our sins in those last hours of his life. But in recent years, there have been people like Pope Benedict who have seen another level of meaning. That we could look at the word Passion is if you meet someone who's passionate, they're energetic, they're excited, they throw their whole heart into something. Does that shed some light on what Jesus did for us on the cross? Pope Benedict takes us to a deeper level and even says that the cross reveals to us the passionate love of our God. That God is so passionately in love with us he was willing to come down, take on human flesh, become one of us and offer his life in love for our sins. And I think that that's a beautiful insight. I wanna talk about a little bit here at the beginning because I think many Christians and quite frankly, even some of us Catholics, Catholic Christians here, we can, when we look at the cross, we can sometimes focus so much on just the punishment that Jesus endured for us. All of the suffering that he faced. And in the Catholic tradition, and we see, well, that's an important component of course, the real center of understanding the theology of the cross is love. The real center of the theology of the cross is love. But sometimes, especially in our Western or American perspective, many Protestants will view the cross primarily in terms of Christ stepping in and taking on our wrath. You've ever heard that kind of presentation of the gospel? A view that many theologians might call it, categorize it as penal substitution. It's the idea that, so there's sinful humanity and sinful humanity deserved to be punished and God is gonna pour out his punishment upon sinful humanity, but then his innocent son, Jesus Christ, steps in and says, no, I'll take on the punishment and all the wrath of the father is poured upon the son and he takes on the wrath of God so that we don't have to. That's how many Christians in our modern world might view the cross. But let's just pause and just think about that. Does that really make any sense? Does that make any sense? I mean, just from a human perspective, does that make any sense? Imagine if there was a dad and he has two sons and one son does something really bad and the father's gonna come in and issue this punishment on that son. He's gonna give this son a big spanking, let's say. And then all of a sudden, the innocent child, the innocent brother steps in and says, no, no dad, no dad, don't punish my guilty brother. I'll take on the punishment, spank me instead. And imagine the father looks at the innocent son, looks at the guilty one, looks at the innocent, looks at the guilty and he says to himself, I don't care who I punish. I just need to spank someone. I'll take the innocent one and start spanking the innocent father. How does that possibly solve the problem? And what does that say about the father? What kind of father is that? That's not a father of justice. It's not a father that is solving any problem here. It's just that you get a sense of an angry man with pent-up frustration. You just gotta let it out on someone. Is that the view we wanna have of God the Father? Let's be really careful on how we understand the cross. Does Jesus endure great suffering for our sins? Absolutely. But as the Catechism explains, it is love. It is love to the end that gives the cross its redemptive value. And the way I would want us to think about this is this. I remember, so fondly, when I was here as a graduate student taking classes with Dr. Han, and I remember him going through the whole, we would look at the cross, him pointing out how the cross really reveals something. It's like a window into God's very inner life of who God is. It's like a window into the Holy Trinity that eternally, long before God ever created the world, God created humanity, even before God created the angels, God existed as the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the Son, his whole existence is about giving himself totally in love to the Father. And then the Father gives himself back totally in love to the Son, and that very outpouring of love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. But the Son, if the very life of the Son is all about total self-giving love, when that eternal divine Son of God enters into time, enters into this world, takes on human flesh, what does that Son continue to do in his humanity? He does what he's been doing for all eternity. He gives himself totally in love to the Father. He gives himself totally in love to the people. That's why he's constantly serving. He's constantly going out to the lost. When people are hungry and the disciples say, okay, send them away, we're tired, it's the end of the day. He says, no, we gotta go feed them. It's just Jesus constantly pouring himself out to his people. And you see this reaches culmination on Calvary when Jesus gives himself totally in love on the cross, giving up his very life. What you see on Calvary is a window into the life of the Holy Trinity, the life of the eternal Son. What he's been doing for all eternity, he does in time throughout his human life, and continues to do so in his grace that he gives us. And that's maybe the most important point here, is that what Jesus does, his offering of his life on the cross, he doesn't do that so that we don't have to do that. He does it so that then he can give us his grace and reproduce that life in us. He goes to Calvary. He goes and gives himself up in total love so that he can live that sacrificial love through us, through grace, through the life of Christ dwelling within us, the very divine life of Christ that we receive in the sacrifice, that we grow in through prayer and good deeds and the virtues. And so here's my question for all of you. Is there anybody here who has perfected the art of sacrificial self-giving love? Has anyone perfected that yet? Is there anyone here that has areas in their lives where they could grow in sacrificial self-giving love? If there's anyone here that's not raising your hand right now, I wanna meet you. I wanna meet you because that means you're a saint. And if I touch you, I become a second-class relic. It'd be awesome. I'm just gonna... No, so we're all called. We're made in the image and likeness of God, but we're not made in the image and likeness of just some vague deity up there, like Bette Midler's God. God that's just watching us from a distance. God is watching us or some vague kind of spiritual force like in Star Wars. No, no, we're made in the image and likeness of the triune God. And that very life of God is about total self-giving love. He sent his son to show us what that life is all about. He died for our sins and he wants to reproduce that life. We're made to live like Jesus. And that's where we find our happiness and our fulfillment and Christ shows us the way in the way of the cross. That's why I wanna spend time looking at this. But do you see the Catholic distinctive feature here? I'm gonna give you a quote from Pope Benedict on this point. Pope Benedict. And by the way, I'm drawing on my brand new book here that just came out this last lint. It's called No Greater Love, A Biblical Walk Through Christ Passion. And so in this book, I walk through step by step from Gethsemane all the way to Calvary to unpack all these stories that we've known from, again, many of us from our childhood, but unpack them anew to encounter these scenes like a first century Jew would with the biblical background, the first century Jewish expectations and to understand this vision of love that Christ is offering us step by step. But listen to what Pope Benedict says about this. He says, God is a lover with all the passion of a true love. When you think of the passion narratives, the passion of Jesus Christ, do you think of this as revealing God the lover? God who is a lover with all the passion of a true love. Do you think of it the way St. Catherine of Siena would look at it? Where she would look at how much God loves us and see the story of salvation culminating in Christ on the cross and say, God, you are a mad lover. You are drunk with love. In other words, it just turns your world upside down, that's just not at all what we would expect. We who are sinners, we who've turned our backs on you, let you down all these years, all these different ways, you love us that much, that it just turns my world upside down. Pope Benedict said, God is a lover with all the passion of a true love. But I wanna be clear, his passionate love isn't like the passion love of two teenagers just falling in love, enjoying each other's company, getting this rush of emotions. That's not the kind of passion that Pope Benedict is talking about. It is a passionate love that expresses itself in the highest form of love and agape love, ultimately this total unconditional free love that he offers on the cross. Listen to what Pope Benedict says about this. God's passionate love for his people is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. So great is God's love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death. And so reconciles justice and love. Pope Benedict, even before he was Pope Benedict as Cardinal Rothsinger in a number of his books he reflected on a passage from Hosea where in the Old Testament you have that beautiful bridal image that we've already heard a bit about in our conference of God's people, the Israelites turn away from God and the bride is like Israel, is like an unfaithful bride, she's like an adulteress. And yet God is the faithful bridegroom and he passionately wants to reconcile himself to his unfaithful bride. He even wants to woo her back, to win her heart back. And there's this moment in the book of Hosea chapter 10 where God says, my heart recoils within me. How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I send you off to the Gentiles to suffer and to be separated from me? I can't do that, I'm so passionate. This is paraphrase, of course, but Pope Benedict is bringing this up that God is so passionate in love with his people that his passionate love drives him to come and take on our humanity and take on the cross and suffer and die so that we could be reunited with him. But it's the gift of love that reconciles us to the Father. That's at the heart of redemption, it is the gift of love. It's not how much blood was shed, it's not how much suffering was endured, it was the act of love that Jesus offers up a gift of love that we could never do on our own. He becomes one of us so he represents us. He's a true representative of the human family so that he can represent us and offer a gift of love on our behalf. But here's the difference between Jesus and me. If I go and say, hey, I wanna save humanity, nail some nails into my hands, that's gonna do nothing, nada. Because I'm just a finite human being, God, who is infinite. His act of love is like an infinite act of love that is offered on our behalf and can reconcile us to the Father. That's why love is at the very center. Listen to what John Paul II to draw on another recent saintly pope. He says, what gives the cross its redemptive value is not the material fact that an innocent person has suffered the chastisement deserved by the guilty and that justice has in some way been satisfied. Rather the saving power of the cross, he goes on to say, quote, comes from the fact that the innocent Jesus out of pure love entered into solidarity with the guilty and thus transformed their situation from within. Maybe two more quotes here. The Catechism says, it's love to the end that confers on Christ's sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation as atonement and satisfaction. And then maybe my favorite quote is from Catherine of Siena, who once said, the nails, could not have held Jesus fast to the cross if love had not held him there first. So let's always remember that, that the cross is ultimately about love, a gift of love, and it's a gift of love that he offered on our behalf, but it's one that he wants to live in us day to day in our marriages, in our friendships, in our workplace, in our community and in our relationship with him. So with that, are you ready to walk through a couple of vignettes in Christ Passion? You ready to walk with me? So we went from Rome, we're going to Jerusalem now. And we're gonna go to the mountain across from Jerusalem on the east side known as the Mount of Olives. We're gonna go to a place where there are ancient olive trees. Well, these olive trees that scientists have shown are about 900 years old, but their root systems go all the way back to the time of Jesus. And so when you go into the Garden of Gethsemane where a few of these olive trees there, you come in contact with something from the time of Christ. And I love taking pilgrims there because you get a sense of this Jesus isn't just a picture on a crucifix, a picture in my living room, an idea in a doctrine. You know, he's real, he came right here to this mountain the night before he died. He sweat blood right here. He died for me here. And I wanna take you to the Garden of Gethsemane. So we're gonna go to the first point here. And with each of these little scenes, I'm gonna draw out one application point for our lives and what it's revealing about God's wisdom for life and what authentic love is. So first of all, total surrender. I want you to imagine being one of the apostles that are there with Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane. Imagine particularly being one of the three, Peter, James, and John that got that closer view of the agony in the garden. Imagine you're there. You walked from the Last Supper across the Kidron Valley up to the Mount of Olives there in Gethsemane. And then Jesus pulls you aside and he looks you in the eye and he says to you, my soul is sorrowful, even unto death. Now, when we hear those words, we go, oh, Jesus is really sorrowful. He's got a lot going on in his life. But I want you to understand biblically what these words mean. There's these words describe someone being pushed to the extremes, pushed to the limits of grief. But what kind of grief is Jesus enduring there in Gethsemane? What is it that he's going through there in Gethsemane? This language of my soul is sorrowful, even unto death. I want to give you one key Old Testament verse that's in the background here. It comes from the book of Sirach, chapter 37, verse two. In Sirach 37, too, it uses this similar language about sorrow unto death. Listen to what it says, though. Is it not a grief to the death when a friend is turned to enemy? Is it not a grief to the death when a friend is turned to enemy? Think about what does this Old Testament background do for shedding light on what Jesus says in Gethsemane? When Jesus is agonizing in the garden, what is he agonizing about? Is he focused on himself at all the pain and suffering he's gonna endure? I'm sure that was a part of it. I don't think that's the heart of the matter. Is he focusing on how all the people he came to save are gonna reject him and mock him and spit at him and send him off to be crucified? I'm sure he's aware of that, but I think this Old Testament background sheds light on what was grieving him the most, which was what his dear friend was coming to that same garden to become an enemy, wasn't he? He was thinking of Judas. He's not amazing to think about. Jesus' amazing love, even for Judas. Jesus talked about loving your enemy, but he totally is living it out here, and this is what causes him such pain to think this man that I've invested in these three years, and Judas, he's becoming an enemy. He's going to betray me. Another interesting thing that would strike you is you notice all of a sudden, Jesus, you see him kneeling down. He falls on his knees in prayer, and then he lays prostrate. As biblical readers, if we're reading this story, we should go, whoa, whoa, whoa, something really big is happening here. I better get out my yellow highlighter, something really important is here, because have we ever seen Jesus pray before? Many times we've seen Jesus pray before, but have the Gospels ever given us details about his posture in prayer ever before this moment? No. This is the first time we read about Jesus' posture in prayer. So as a biblical, attentive reader, we should go, oh, something's different, something's new here, what's going on? This is intense. He's falling on his knees. Now he's laying prostrate. This is all about his total abandonment of himself, his total entrusting of himself, his total surrender of himself to the Father in all that he's about to endure. But do you ever wonder about that strange, mysterious prayer he prays? Matthew's Gospel tells us he prays it three times. What's the prayer of the garden? Do you remember? Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass. Have you ever wondered about that prayer? I remember as a kid wondering about this prayer, going, what's going on here? What's Jesus doing? Is Jesus having second thoughts? At the last minute, he's right there to cross the goal line, he's about to begin his passion, and all of a sudden he's hesitating. He's a little nervous. Father, is there another way we could do this? Do you ever wonder what's going on here? I thought the whole point, that Jesus came into the world to die for our sins, and now all of a sudden he's like, oh, I don't know if I want to do that. Is there some other way? What is this prayer all about? And again, I think it's going to reveal something beautiful about this total surrender. Beautiful about the love that Jesus is showing us here. First of all, the prayer recognizes, in Jesus' prayer, he's simply speaking from his own humanity. Remember, Jesus is truly human. He's truly human, and so if he knows, Judas is about to betray him. His apostles are all about to run away scared and abandon him. He's going to go be mocked by the Jewish Sanhedrin, and then he's going to be sent off to be crucified, scourged, and then killed on Calvary. Is that something you think a human would look forward to? If you were, if someone is truly human, are they going, oh, those are all the things on my bucket list, that sounds great. No, this kind of suffering and rejection is repugnant to human nature, and if Jesus is truly human, he's not looking forward to this. And yet, and yet, Jesus is not merely human, he's also truly divine, fully divine. And so that's why he says in the very next breath, not my will, but your will be done. In other words, what Jesus is doing is he's looking at all of the suffering he's about to endure. He's looking at square in the eye, he sees the cross, and he's acknowledging this is going to be really, really, really hard. He's truly human. And in the same breath, he says, not my will, but your will be done, he's going to embrace this cross. And it's a beautiful model for us of what God is calling us to do. You know, the great St. Thomas Aquinas, the great St. Thomas Aquinas says a beautiful analogy that helps explain this prayer really well. He says it's kind of like taking bad tasting medicine. Have you ever had to take bad tasting medicine? How many, when you take that bad tasting medicine, do you like have a party and invite all your friends over? Hey, let's watch the game and let's all drink this bad tasting medicine. No, like you don't take it for its bad taste. You take it because even though it tastes bad, you know it's an instrument to help you get better to restore you, to heal you, to bring health to you. You're not taking it for the bad taste itself. And that's what Jesus is doing, he's acknowledging, this is bad tasting medicine, but I told him I want to embrace this. But here's the difference between Jesus and us. So Jesus looks at the bad tasting medicine of the cross and then acknowledges it's hard and then immediately embraces it. When we are forced in certain circumstances in life or where we sense God is inviting us to take a certain step out to follow him, but we know it's going to be hard. It's going to involve change. It's going to have to give up something. I'm going to have to apologize and admit I was wrong. I'm going to have to maybe go do a different thing. I've never done before and I'm nervous and I'm afraid of failure. Whatever that might be, whenever that happens, we are really good at acknowledging that's bad tasting medicine. We're not really good at the second part of the prayer, but not my will, you're will be done Lord. It's kind of like, do you ever give your kids bad tasting medicine? You ever done that with your little kids? But that's an adventure. I can tell you about my little daughter Eleanor. Little Eleanor this last year, she's three now, in her two years, so this last fall, we had to give her, she had a fever and we had to give her some medicine. And did you ever see parents do this where they're trying to pin the child down to get that medicine down? I mean, so my wife and I together, we're holding her feet down because she's kicking and she's moving her hands around like get this medicine away from me. I'm holding it down. She's holding like some legs down and then we're about ready to get the medicine in and then we realize we need one more hand because Eleanor is like this. She's just closing that mouth because she knows she doesn't want that bad tasting medicine going in. So now I gotta quickly kinda open the mouth up. Before hand blocks us, we get the medicine in and we're about to celebrate and then what does Eleanor do? She spits it up all over us. That's how we can be as adult children of God many times when God is calling us to something. When he's calling us to stand up for the truth. I don't want to, I'm afraid of it. Everyone's gonna think of me. When he's calling us to admit we were wrong, I don't wanna have to admit I was wrong to that friend or that coworker or my spouse. When we have to say sorry or have to give up something or go in a different direction, we kick and scream like a little baby. But what Jesus is revealing to us here on the cross or in the Garden of Gethsemane is his total surrender. He's human, he acknowledges this is gonna be hard but he totally embraces it. So that's one first step in Christ's passion. I wanna go to another step now. As I think something else that's revealed here in the wisdom of God in Christ's passion is that when we do follow Jesus as disciples, we're gonna be misunderstood, we're gonna be disliked, we're gonna be thought of as weird, bizarre, we may be hated, we may be opposed, we may be persecuted for the truth that God has revealed. Right, when Paul was going around proclaiming the gospel, it wasn't like, oh, that's beautiful, that makes all sense, thank you. It was a stumbling block to the Jews and complete folly to the Gentiles. He was mocked and ridiculed for this belief by many people and we have to be ready to face the same thing. That's what Jesus endures. As he goes off and he goes on trial before the Sanhedrin and then on trial before Pilate, he is persecuted for the truth. The chief priests, I love this line in the passion narrative, they seek out false testimony. I mean, it wasn't like that false testimony came forward, it's like, we're putting a guy on trial and let's find false testimony to condemn him. So it just shows how evil they are. Herod mocks him, Peter denies him, Judas betrays him. The chief priests end up slapping him, hitting him, spitting at him, blindfolding him and mocking him saying, prophesy to us, oh Christ, who is it that struck you? You know, there was a missionary of charity sister that once told me I was doing a retreat for them on the passion narratives and she came up to me at one of the breaks and says, Dr. Shrie, that scene when they mock Jesus and they spit at him and they slap him and they blindfold him, that's the hardest scene for me. Every year I'm asked to teach on the passion narrative to the poor where we serve. And I can teach everything, I can teach about his scourging, I can teach about him carrying the heavy cross, I can teach about the nails going in his hand, I can teach about him giving his last breath on Calvary, all those scenes I can teach about, but this scene when he's mocked this way, I just start to cry and I can't teach it, why is that? And it was very interesting, I never pondered this as much but as we were talking about it, I said, you know, it's one thing when somebody is persecuted in their body, they're scourged, they're crucified, that's one thing. But there's a sense in which when you crucify someone's reputation, you just mock them, you don't even take them seriously and their dignity as a person, that's somehow even worse. Like Jesus is, all of our bodies are gonna go to a grave, Jesus's rises, but ours will rise in the end, last day. But long after our bodies go to the grave, our reputation will go on and there's a sense that that's something deeper core to who we are and I think that's what she was picking up on here. But what I wanna talk about here, of all the scenes we could look at, I wanna consider the scene with Pilate and this is something I'll talk much more extensively about in my breakout session later today, but when that pivotal moment on Good Friday when Jesus says, I've come into the world to reveal the truth to the world, what does Pilate say? Do you remember? What is truth? What is truth? For Pilate, the idea of real objective truth, that's not important. The idea of a truth that's true for everyone, Pilate doesn't get that. That's not important for Pilate. Pilate knows the facts here. He knows Jesus is innocent, right? The Sanhedrin are coming to Pilate and saying, hey, this guy is refusing, making people not pay the taxes. He's stirring up the people. Like they're painting a picture of Jesus as a revolutionary. He's gonna cause this great disturbance and Rome should know about this. He's a threat to the Roman Empire. Look, Pilate is used to dealing with real rebels, real revolutionaries. He knows what a real revolutionary looks like. He quickly talks to Jesus and can size it up and go, this is not a real revolutionary. This is not a threat to Rome. This is simply some internal Jewish religious disagreement. And he figures it out very quickly that this is about envy, that the chief priests are envious of Jesus, that that's the real issue. Pilate knows those facts. He knows the fact that Jesus is innocent. But if there is no truth, if truth is relative, if everyone can make up their own truth, then none of those facts matters. Everyone has their own truth and Pilate has his own truth. His own truth is this. He's gotta save his career. He's gotta save his good relationship with Caesar. Because we know in the stories, the story unfolds, the chief priests are starting to stir up the crowds. Pilate's afraid of a riot breaking out. And then they cry out, if you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar. When I used to look at that a long time ago, I would go, oh, no friend of Caesar means like, oh, they're gonna blackmail him. They're gonna say he's not really kind to Caesar because he let this revolutionary go. But to be a friend of the king is a position of great political and social status. You're one of the emperor's close advisors. So Pilate has a certain level of privilege and honor within the Roman Empire. And they're threatening that he's gonna lose that. And that's just too much for Pilate to bear. He knows Jesus is innocent, but he's like, I gotta protect my own status, my own reputation, my own status as a friend of Caesar. I gotta protect my career. And so if there's no truth to guide Pontius Pilate, you see what happens. He sends an innocent man off to be killed. And my friends, that's what happens if we don't have truth to anchor us. When a culture no longer believes in a truth that's true for everyone, objective truth, many innocent people will get hurt. That's what we need to see. If there is no truth, then we can't say anything is wrong. Everyone just makes up their own truth then. So if there was a father that left his wife and children to go run off with another woman, we can't say that that's wrong because for his truth, this was gonna make him happier. If we say that a culture wants to just neglect the poor, well, we can do that. We can't say that that's wrong because that's true for our culture. We wanna just have comfort and material gain for ourselves. If a culture says, well, everyone can decide for themselves if they think this is a baby in the womb or not, we can't say that anything's wrong, right? Because it's just, well, for this person's truth or this culture's truth, this is okay to do this. We have to see that truth, truth is not an abstract concept, a philosophical thing way up here merely. From Christian eyes, we need to see truth is a person. Truth is a person, Jesus Christ. And to the extent we talk like this and say, well, for me, this is true, but for other people, it's not true, to the extent I'm denying truth, to that extent I'm denying Jesus himself. Let's not be like Pilate. Our culture does not need more cowards. People who internally kind of know the truth, they know what's right or wrong, but they're just afraid to stand up for it. We don't need Christians that are gonna cower like Pilate did on Good Friday. We need Catholics, especially today, they're gonna be willing to stand with Jesus and stand for truth, amen? All right, let's go to the next point here. I wanna take us on the road to Calvary now. So on the way of the cross, we might find unexpected crosses in our path of discipleship. So let's talk about this scene that we see here, Simon of Cyrene. Do you ever wonder about Simon of Cyrene? I remember as a kid, I went to Catholic schools and looking back on it, I had an amazing Catholic school experience. I know that not everyone has that, but I was really blessed. My pastor was, I don't know if anyone's from Michigan, but my pastor in Northwest Indiana was a man named Monsignor Carl Mengling, who became Bishop of Lansing many years ago. And he was just a really dynamic, really evangelizing pastor. He had people from all over the Chicago area coming in and doing Bible studies coming for devotions. But I grew up in my Catholic school having stations of the cross, not just every Friday of Lent, but on first Fridays throughout the school year. So we did stations all the time. This was just a part of our pious devotion as a kid. And I just thought, this was normal. That's what everybody got as Catholics. And I remember though, there were those little books. You probably have those little books that give little reflections on each of the stations. And the little books we had would come to this scene and talk all about how Simon, he was such a compassionate man that he cared for other people. He cared for Jesus and he's a model of Christian service, a model of Christian compassion. He helped Jesus carry the cross and we should help others carry their burdens and difficulties in life as well. Beautiful pastoral point. But as a little kid, I'm going, why is Simon the model for compassion here? Did Simon volunteer for this? Did Simon wake up on that Friday and go, oh, it's Friday, prison ministry day. I need to find a prisoner, you know, to go help. That's not what he did. He go, oh, who can I go serve? No, no, he's just kind of coming in the city, we're almost soldier, boom, take this guy, you got to carry his cross. Simon did not do this out of compassion. He did it out of compulsion. So why is he this great model for Christian service? I think it's a good question for a little seventh grader to ask and a good question for us adults to ask. Let me give a little background on the scene because Luke will give us one little detail that I think signals to us that he was transformed. Simon was transformed through his encounter with this unexpected cross. Here's the background, what do we know about Simon? He's from Cyrene, which is in North Africa. There was a large Jewish population that was there. Luke's Gospel chapter 23, verse 26, tells us Simon was coming in from the countryside. So that tells us he's likely one of the many pilgrims coming in to Jerusalem for the big feast of Passover. And there was a very early tradition that Simon actually had a conversion through this encounter with the cross and became a great Christian. It was well known in the early Christian church. Where do we, where that tradition, where am I to come from? Is there any biblical roots for that? Luke chapter 23, verse 27 tells us something very fascinating, it's just a little tiny detail, very small detail, but listen, it tells us that Simon carried the cross behind Jesus. So he carries the cross behind Jesus. Why is that significant? Simon picks up his cross, the cross of Jesus, and then is carrying it behind him. What does Jesus say the model for discipleship is? If you wanna be my disciple, what do you need to do? Pick up your cross. You must pick up your cross and follow me. He says this multiple times. You wanna be my disciple? You gotta pick up your cross and follow me. What do we see? Here's a man named Simon. What does Simon do? Exhibit A, he picks up the cross and he starts following Jesus. I think Luke is subtly showing us that Simon became a disciple. He's like a model for this kind of discipleship. You know, Mark's gospel introduces Simon this way. It says Simon is the father of Alexander and Rufus. So it's interesting, it suggests that his sons were so well known, well known believers in the early church, perhaps so well known that they didn't even need an introduction. They didn't need to explain who is Alexander, who's Rufus, everybody knew who Alexander and Rufus was, some might say. And so that's why he could just say, oh yeah, he's the father of Alexander and Rufus. Perhaps maybe he's the father of the same Rufus. St. Paul talks about a Roman 1613 who's eminent in the Lord, so well known. If you were the son of the man who carried the cross on Good Friday, you'd be pretty well known too, I would bet. But the point I wanna make is this, practically, again, how does the passion narrative show us true wisdom, wisdom for life? What you see in this story of Simon is not a man that volunteered and chose this cross on this day, it just kinda came to him unexpectedly. And you know how when you come up with your Lenten strategy, I'm gonna give up chocolate, I'm gonna give up my favorite drink, I'm gonna do, it's one thing when you plan your own mortifications, and we should, it's good to do that. But the real mortifications that God uses to shape us the most are the ones we don't plan, the ones we're not counting on, the ones that just kinda happen spontaneously and unexpectedly, right? You have your whole day all mapped out and then what happens? A car breaks down, or a kid breaks down, or a friend lets you down, a co-worker lets you down. Something happens, you're thrown for a loop, what do you do in those moments? Many of us can panic, we can get discouraged, we can get frustrated, we wanna remember the story of Simon and the cross here, that Simon didn't choose this, he didn't expect it, but through the unexpected cross, he encountered our Lord and was changed. And through the unexpected circumstances in your life, whether it's a situation with your finance, the health of someone you love, a relationship, a strained relationship in your family, all these unexpected things that happen, realize that that's when Jesus wants to encounter you in that. St. Philip Neary has a beautiful quote about this I wanna share with you. Philip Neary, whenever I go to Rome, I always love taking pilgrims to the church of Chiesanova and we go right up and we pray at the tomb of Philip Neary and I always share a couple quotes from Philip Neary right at his tomb, this is one of them. Philip Neary once said, never try to evade the crosses God sends you. Never try to evade or run away from the crosses God sends you for you will only find a heavier one. I love that quote now. It's not as if God is like throwing crosses at us like Zeus throwing lightning bolts down. I don't want you to think of it that way. It's just Philip Neary is acknowledging that because of sin and our fallen humanity, there's suffering in this world. We're all gonna have a share of suffering, some more acutely than others, but we're all gonna have a share in suffering in this world. But Jesus wants to meet us in that suffering and help us and heal us and bring about some good within us. And so if I run away from the cross in front of me, I'm just gonna end up with a heavier cross because I'm running away from where Jesus wants to meet me right now. Not that Jesus wants to inflict the cross on me, but he wants to encounter me there. And what can happen here? We have to realize that just like Simon, God can use these things to bring about some good in our lives. So no matter what may be happening out here in my life and these crosses that I'm facing, I as a Christian disciple should have faith that God can bring some good in here that maybe he's allowing me to experience this cross so I grow in patience. That's a good thing for my soul. Maybe he's allowing this happen so that I can just be more courageous and face suffering in trials with a little more endurance. Or maybe he's doing it so I could just trust him more and abandon myself to him more. Maybe I'm very successful and I like and everything all is in order and I usually succeed in things, but now I'm experiencing some failure and this cross is gonna help me grow in humility and realize it's not all about me and my talents and my planning, but I have to rely on God more. Or maybe he's allowing me to experience some suffering so that I can be more compassionate on others who are going through suffering. There's always some good that God can bring out in my soul with the crosses that are unexpected in my life. Let's remember Simon and the unexpected cross. All right, next point. At Calvary, Roman soldiers were used to hearing various cries when someone was crucified. I'm sure they'd hear cries of pain and anger and despair, but the last thing they'd ever expect to hear was this, as the nail was going into someone's hand. Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. And I think the cross here reveals another piece of great wisdom for how we're called to live, to live more like Jesus, forgiveness. I wanna talk about forgiveness, but I wanna acknowledge something here. It's not always easy to forgive someone, is it? In fact, the Catechism has a beautiful little section, you should check it out. Catechism 2843, beautiful section on this. Catechism acknowledges that it's not always in our power not to feel a wound that has been inflicted on us. Some of us have deep wounds from people that have deeply hurt us, maybe from a long time ago, maybe going back to childhood, maybe a certain family member. Maybe it goes back to last week, somebody in the office that just has a caustic personality and this is really difficult to work with. It could be somebody in our parish, you know, whatever it is, but we can feel these wounds that we might not be able to remove the feeling. But there are two things we can always do, even if we have these tense feelings, frustrated feelings, hurt feelings, there are two things we can always do and should always do as Christians in invitation of Jesus Christ. First thing, we should always turn the hurt into intercession. When we experience that hurt, we remember that hurt. We see that person, we remember that person. I can pray for them. You see, we're not called to like everyone, but we are called to love everyone. Like, what does it mean to like someone, to feel attraction toward them, to enjoy their company, to take delight and pleasure in being around them? Love is different. Love is to will the good of the other. It's in the will, it's to seek what's best for someone else. So I don't have to like everyone, I don't have to warm fuzzy feelings when that person that deeply hurt me and we've never been reckoned as around me, I don't have to have warm, fuzzy feelings for them. I might not be able to control that, but I am called to love that person, even those that hurt us. And one of the best ways we can love them is to pray for them. Not when I say pray for them, I don't mean, God, I pray that you convert this wicked man's heart. I don't mean like that. I mean, you can pray. May you bless this person, Jesus. May they grow in their friendship with you. May you bless their work, may you bless their marriage, may you bless their family. You can pray for their well-being, pray for their good. You can offer sacrifices for this person. If there's someone that is particularly, you have a tense relationship with, offer Holy Communion for them. After you come back to the pew, offer your Holy Communion. These are beautiful acts of the will. And if you notice any kind of, the slightest hatred, resentment in your heart that builds up, pray for them, because that little tiny act of love, it's a very small act of love that can drive the demons of hatred away. Always turn your hurt to intercession. That's what Jesus does. He prays for them. Father, forgive them. Secondly, compassion. The Catechism says compassion. Have compassion on them. You know, Jesus on the cross, what does he do? He doesn't, he has the nails going. He doesn't say, oh, this is okay. This isn't a big deal. No, this isn't okay. And it is a big deal. They're murdering the Son of God. It's a real issue here. But he doesn't also say, and Father, pour your wrath down on these wicked people. Jesus, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. I think that's the key. Oftentimes we hurt each other without intending to. We don't realize what we're doing. I don't think most people wake up in the morning and say, how can I make my spouse really frustrated at me today? We might make our spouse frustrated with us today, but we don't like intend it, you know? How can I really make that co-worker really miserable? We don't intend to. We don't realize what we're doing. And many times people act out of their own hurt. There's a great saying, hurt people hurt people. Like when you're deeply wounded in your own life, you tend to let that out on other people. And if we can see beyond just the hurt someone's inflicted on us and see, maybe they're deeply wounded themselves. That could be a great moment as well for us, you know? So, but I think about, especially in marriage, how many times do we hurt each other without intending, you know? So to not judge our spouse's heart to realize they probably didn't mean it. They probably wish they hadn't said it that way. It's a beautiful thing. You know, like in my marriage, I think like my wife, Beth, like she looks up to Heaven and say, Father forgive Ted, he never knows what he's doing. You know, and to have that humble attitude of compassion as fellow wounded sinners that we realize we don't really mean to hurt others many times. Okay, last one. Last one I'm gonna go to really quickly here. I just wanna turn to the death of Christ. Some, one of his last words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What did these words mean? Have you ever wondered about this? Was Jesus really abandoned by his father on Good Friday? Was Jesus rejected by the father? Is he separated from the father? What is going on here? I think one of the beautiful things here is to see biblically what Jesus is doing is he's quoting something that many people would have recognized. He's quoting, I like to say he's quoting an oldie. You know, like the Jewish rabbinic method was to use a certain line from a passage to bring to mind the larger context. It'd be kind of like this. If some of you asked me, hey, so Dr. Sree, what music did you listen to in college? And I said to you, oh, I don't know, but it's a beautiful day. And I still haven't found what I'm looking for. And I'm gonna keep talking like this with or without you. Those of you that know the rock band U2 and Bono and The Edge, you know what I'm talking about. I'm quoting some of their most famous songs. The rest of you that don't know U2, you're going, what is Dr. Sree talking about right now? You're missing the point, right? Or if he asked me, what's your favorite movie, what's your favorite scene from a movie? And I said, why did the ring come to me? You know, oh, you're thinking Lord of the Rings, right? You're thinking Tolkien, right? But if you don't know Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, you're thinking, we gotta pray for Dr. Sree's marriage. He's having a marriage crisis, you know? So what is Jesus doing? He's quoting the opening line of a Psalm, Psalm 22 in which the Psalmist says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me from the wounds of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day, but you don't answer by night and if I had no rest. This is a man that is going through great persecution and suffering, he feels as if he's been abandoned by God. But the very next verses, Psalm 22, look it up. If you read the next verses, verses three and four, he says, and yet God, you're holy. You're enthroned on the praises of Israel and you are fathers trusted and you they trusted and you did deliver them. They cried out to you and they were saved. Does that sound like a man in despair? This is a man that's going through great suffering. He feels like he's been abandoned by God but he's remembering his story, the story of the salvation history and he's remembering that the ancestors of Israel always called on God, God was always faithful and he's trusting you'll be faithful to me. And the prayer goes on and becomes a kind of prophecy and it tells about how in the end, like this righteous man is gonna be mocked by people. People are gonna wag their heads as they mock him. He's gonna be pierced in his hands and his feet. They're gonna take his garments and divide his garments and then they're gonna cast lots for his clothing. Does that sound familiar? That's all that happens to Jesus on Good Friday. So this is a prophetic foreshadowing and in closing, the very end of this Psalm reaches this great climactic moment where his suffering he sees will be used for some great good. He says in verse 27, all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, all the families of the nation shall worship before him for a dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. So he sees that somehow in the end of all of the suffering he's going through, this is gonna bear fruit in evangelization that all the ends of the earth are gonna turn to the Lord and worship him. Well, there's so much more I wish that we could get into but I'll just refer you to the book. So this is a book that walks through the passion narratives of Jesus Christ as well as the video Bible study series that we did where we filmed in Jerusalem walking step by step from Gethsemane to Calvary. So thank you so much. I'll be praying for you in the conference. Look forward to getting time with you and our two days here together left. God bless.