Deck 4 - The Christ
It Is All About Love
It is all about love. The contradiction of this statement while gazing up at an extreme Roman torture and execution device – the Cross – is a paradox indeed. Recently, while I was touring the Cathedral in Siena, Italy, a young mother asked me the meaning of the larger-than-life crucifix displayed in the Cathedral. Her 4-year-old son could not take his eyes off the statue suspended high above us. The crucifix mesmerized the child, disquieted by the scene depicted before him. “It is all about love,” I answered.
What a strange contradiction: a Roman torture device as the symbol of love. In the early days after Jesus’s death, it must have felt like evil, fear, and the devil had won, and like the oppressive Roman regime was the victor. It must have seemed like hope, humanity, and love had lost, and like Jesus was truly dead. If this time before the resurrection was so scary for Christians, why do we now honor his execution and wear his torture device around their necks? Ultimately, the crucifixion is a reminder of God’s love for us.
The Holy Trinity is an eternal exchange of love. Father creates the Son. Son loves and obeys the Father and the love they share is poured out on us through their Holy Spirit. In his infinite goodness, God created us in His image to share in the Trinity’s love. However, there was one big foil in the plan – the disobedience in the garden. This original sin created a gulf between God and man. Self, chosen over God, destroyed our relationship with Him. God does not force; He invites, we choose. The perfection of the garden relationship ended.
As witnessed in the garden, sin has consequences. Our sinful choices have effects. Sometimes they are immediate, sometimes they are hidden, and sometimes they are universal, but those consequences are always damaging. Humanity got stuck with a damaged relationship and was imprisoned by a cycle of sin that they could not fix themselves.
The Father sent his Son to rescue us. Jesus entered into our humanity – born fully human and fully divine – to heal the relationship damaged by original sin. Human sin has eternal consequences, and the price of sin is death: separation from our Creator. Death had to occur to right the wrongs of our sin, and we were the ones who should have died.
But The Christ, Jesus, in all his humanity and divinity, loved us so much that he took our place in death. He took our sins on his shoulders and suffered our consequences on that Roman torture device. He ransomed us from the captivity of sin and atoned for our sins. This supreme act of love allowed us to live again in an intimate union with our heavenly Father. According to St. Augustine, "everything He suffered was the price of our ransom.” By his obedience, Jesus shows us how deep his love is for us. We are worth saving, worth sacrificing for, worth dying for, even dying on a cross. Jesus desires a perfect relationship with us for eternity. Jesus’s willing sacrifice is why the crucifix is all about love.
Pondering the Passion of Jesus, our Savior, can be difficult. It is hard to think about unjust cruelty in the world. It is challenging to understand why a loving God would allow his Son to die such a death. If we remember that the crucifixion is all about love - Jesus’s love for us, his Father, and the mission of our reconciliation - we will appreciate his sacrifice in a new way. By meditating on his Passion, our understanding of this great mystery of redemption will deepen. We will be motivated to increase our love of Jesus. The Scripture verses of Deck 4 – The Christ will help you on this journey to appreciate the love and humility of His sacrifice for our salvation.
Inspired by:
Paradox noun - a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true Oxford Languages
Ransom noun - a consideration paid or demanded for the release of someone or something from captivity Oxford Languages
Ransom verb - implies releasing from bondage or penalties by giving what is demanded or necessary. Miriam Webster
Romans 5:18-21 Then as one man’s (Adam) trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s (Jesus) act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous. … where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 15:12 This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
John 14:21 He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.
John 7:25-26 … “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill? And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?”
Luke 22:2 And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death; for they feared the people.
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
1 John 4:8-11 …God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Genesis 3:24 He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
1 Timothy 5:24 The sins of some men are conspicuous, pointing to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.
Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were, yet sinners Christ died for us.
John 8:34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.
John 8:11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Ephesians 2:1 And you he made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins.
Philippians 2:8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
John 10:17-18 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father.
Hebrews 9:26 But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
1 John 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.
Hebrews 2:15 …deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
1 Corinthians 13:8 Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 15:54-57 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death where is thy sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Luke 9:20 And he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.”
John 10:24 So, the Jews gathered round him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
John 3:14-17 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
1 Corinthians 13:13 So, faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
John 16:33 …in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
John 19:30 … “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Hebrews 10:12-17 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,”17 then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their misdeeds no more.”
The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition The New Testament. San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2010.
Pg. 573: “God is love. 1 John 4:8 “God exists as an eternal act of love, with the Father, Son and Spirit giving themselves to one another in an everlasting embrace. This love of the Trinity, which has its eternal source in the Father, spills over into history through the sacrificial love of the Son (Rom 5:8) and the sanctifying love of the Spirit (Rom 5:5). For John, we can be sure that God lives in us if we love others as God loves – genuinely, sacrificially, unconditionally. In this way, God’s trinitarian love is reflected on earth as it is in heaven” (CCC #221)
Pg. 477: “…love one another: The supreme mandate that Christ has laid upon his disciples (John 13:34). The meaning of his words is explained by his example, which shows us that Christian love is not an emotion, but an act of the will that adheres to the commandments of God (John 14:31) and expresses itself through heroic generosity and sacrifice, even to the point of death. (John 15:13)”
Bishop Robert Barron, host. “Let Christianity be Weird!” Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermons-Catholic Preaching and Homilies, episode 322, Word on Fire, 4 April 2023, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bishop-robert-barrons-sermons-catholic-preaching-homilies/id75551187?i=1000607363730