“It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon…” (Luke 23:44).
On the day that Christ died – at the hour of His death, the world was cast into darkness and the Curtain in the Temple split and God Himself was revealed to the world.
“It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ When He had said this, He breathed his last.” (Luke 23:44-46).
And there was darkness in that world in that moment when sin killed God. There was a terrible darkness when God Himself allowed Himself to be murdered by His own creatures to repay Himself and make atonement to Himself for our sin – for yours and for mine too.
And this was a truly unfathomable thing that happened. The wrong that we did when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree was so great – so terrible – so unimaginably awful, that the only way to right that wrong, the only way to atone for it, was for God to make atonement Himself. It was as though my children ad broken glass all over the kitchen floor in a tantrum, but I cleaned up all the mess myself, because I wanted to protect them from stepping on the glass or getting shards on glass into their fingers and injuring themselves. That is what God did in that moment of redemption – He cleaned up the glass that I broke, and He did it – not because it was His duty to do so or His fault that it broke in the first place, He did it because He wished to protect His children from any further harm.
And sometimes, I ignore Him and walk through the glass barefoot. And I get shards of glass into my feet, and I cannot walk. And still, He puts His hand on my shoulder and asks me to wait. And still, I ignore Him…
But in the Easter Mass, the Pascal candle is lit. And two thousand years ago, the Pascal Sacrifice – the Lamb of God – illuminated the whole world. For a moment – an instant – in His death, the light of that Pascal candle seemed to flicker, but upon His resurrection from the dead, the light glowed so brightly that all the souls that had ever and would ever live were saved. And just as the light continued to shine after the death of Christ – through His glorious resurrection two thousand years ago – so too does it shine inside the Church today.
And just as a candle needs oxygen to make the fire grow, so too does the Pascal Sacrifice and the Pascal candle. And I realise today that it is MY job to take that candle outside of the Church and into the world – illuminated in my own soul – to spread the Good News like a fire, to help the whole world grow in love of God…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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