“Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.” (Angel of Fatima).
In all the recounts of the Passion and Death of Christ, I am yet to hear one recount that reports Christ crying.
He did not weep to hear His sentence by Pilot. He did not weep when He was scourged. He did not weep when He was arrested. He did not even weep as He fell on his way to Calvary. When He saw His mother (and her suffering) and the weeping of the women in Jerusalem, even then He did not weep, but consoled them.
On the Cross, as the nails were pounded through bones and sinew and tendons and ligaments – even then He did not weep. When He was nailed on that Cross and hanging, naked and vulnerable, covered in blood and sweat and spittle and dirt, He did not cry. When the dying man beside Him called out and mocked Him, He did not cry. When He thirst, He did not cry and when He gave His most precious Mother – in the agony of her suffering – to the Holy Church, knowing full-well the sinfulness of that Church and her people (even despite the presence of the Holy Spirit), even then, there were no tears.
And yet… Christ did cry.
He cried three times. Once, when he say the Widow of Nairn burying her son (and raised Him from the dead for her). Once, when he reached the tomb of Lazarus (again before raising him from the dead). And a third time about Jerusalem…
“And when He drew near and saw the city He wept over it, saying, ‘Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.’” (Luke 19:41-44).
And how terrible a sight to see perfect love and perfect humility crying. The tears of God are the most terrible tears in all of creation, because those tears are the least deserving…
When the Angel of Fatima appeared to Saints Jacinta, Franchesco and Lucia, he told brought them Holy Communion and said to them, “Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.”
Saint Franchesco took it upon himself to “console your God” – he died when he was ten years old...
And I wonder today and the rigour of that child, who sacrificed and prayed to console His God. For it seems to me that the Tears of God moved that little boy during his ten short years, far more than they have moved me in over forty…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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