THE WONDER OF RECONCILIATION

Jesus Fulfilled His own Words on the Cross

When they nailed Jesus to the Cross, His body was one bloody mass⁶⁵. He had sweat blood. He had been beaten in His face with a stick. The hairs of His beard had been ripped out. The skin on His back had been ripped to shreds. The razor sharp thorns had penetrated the skin on His skull. His head, back, hands and feet were bleeding, and Jesus looked so wounded that many could no longer bear the sight and turned their head away. His own mother would not recognize Him any more:

‘Many people were shocked when they saw Him; He was so disfigured that He hardly looked human. We despised Him and rejected Him; He endured suffering and pain. No one would even look at Him, we ignored Him as if He were nothing. But He endured the suffering that should have been ours, the pain that we should have borne (…) But because of our sins He was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment He suffered, made whole by the blows He received’⁶⁶.

On the Cross Jesus fulfilled His own words: ‘The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them’⁶⁷. Jesus offered you His friendship in the sacrifice which He made. Look to Jesus and see God’s love for you. It is because of God’s indescribable love for you, that Jesus hung on the Cross. John, who was standing next to Mary, later writes about this moment: ‘And God showed His love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through Him. This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven’⁶⁸.