As I've been reflecting on the Events of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus over the past few days, I've come to a realization about the events that we celebrate: Something which has always been there, but I have never noticed before. And that realization is the role that humility plays in the Lord's Passion and Death.
Think about it: How many of us, if faced with the same situation that Christ was in, would have lashed out verbally at our persecutors? How many of us would have asserted our innocence with every last ounce of our strength? How many of us would have made sure to let everyone know that our accusers and persecutors were in the wrong? I would be willing to bet that most of us would have- it's human nature.
And yet- Jesus did not. In his agony in the garden, he wrestled with what he must face, but once he accepted the Father's will, he was silent, and opened not his mouth- just as we heard yesterday in the first reading from Isaiah. He knew he was being wrongly put to death, and he suffered willingly, humbly obeying the will of the Father. Why? So that, as St. Paul says in the Letter of the Romans, God's love might be known to us. "For God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:7)
So what does this mean for us? and how is the Passion of the Lord a lesson in humility for us? In Luke's Gospel, after Jesus makes the first prediction of his Passion, Jesus states that "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow me." (Luke 9:23) We are called to daily humble ourselves, and submit ourselves to God's will, and God's commandments.
Why is this? It is so that we may overcome our pride, and learn to truly follow Christ our Lord, as he leads us to the Father. The Exsultet, The great Hymn of praise sung at the Easter Vigil, speaks of this theme quite well, when it reminds us that the sanctifying power of the night in which Christ rose from the dead "dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty." In the the old translation of the Exsultet, this last line spoke that this night "humbles earthly pride." In any case the message is the same: We are reminded that where Christ has gone, so we too are called to go- we are called to embrace our sufferings for the sake of Christ, as we humbly follow him to the Father.
This means several things: First of all, it means that we are going to have to do some things that are going to be uncomfortable. It means that we are going to have to give up certain things that seem good in order to strive after the supreme good, which is God. So often in our pride, we tell ourselves that God's law cannot be right, because it deprives us of so much. But in the very act of saying so, we allow our pride to enable us to make a lesser good our "god," and in essence separate ourselves from God. This is why pride is the mother of all sins, and has been since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, in order to become "like gods," when they were already like God, because he had made them in his own image!!!
And that is the biggest temptation of pride- to see ourselves as "gods," who can (and do) decide what is best for ourselves, often against what has been set forth in the Divine Law. Pride causes us to embrace a distorted world view, and obscures God's truth from us. This is why we must learn to embrace humility, so as to be able to walk in God's truth. It may seem painful at first, but in time we discover that what we thought was "good" was really keeping us from God, and keeping us from growing in his love. For to see the Commandments as burdensome is to miss the purpose that they serve. For as the Apostle John says in his first Epistle, "For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith." If we see the commandments as a way to grow in love of God, then they are not burdensome, because they serve as guides to help us root out everything else which keeps us from growing in our love of God- They help us to more authentically follow the path which Christ is leading us on to the Father. Love of God demands sacrifice, and when we allow ourselves to make that sacrifice out of humility, our entire worldview changes. We start seeing with the eyes of faith, and not with the eyes of our pride, which have so often led us astray.
So as we prepare to celebrate this most holy night of nights, in which our Lord Jesus Christ passed from Death into life, let us ask God to help us to become more humble in our eyes, to bring down our pride, so that we may more faithfully obey the command of Christ to "deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him."
May God grant you Joy and peace during the coming Easter Season!
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