By Antony Christy, SDB –
April 19: Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12; Hebrew 4: 14-16, 5: 7-9; John 18:1 – 19:42
Into your hands Lord I commend my Spirit… that was not merely words said by Jesus at the end of his life, it was an attitude with which he live his entire life. That is precisely why even his death proved to be a triumph. The first and the second reading bring out the hand of God the Father of Jesus Christ and our Father and Mother, in the salvific plan that was unfolding in the life, suffering and death of God’s only Son! Yes, death was not an end, it was a passing stage within the plan; not a foiling of Christ’s project on earth but an unfurling of the Eternal plan of God to which Christ had totally surrendered himself, while he lived.
Surrender, is the task presented to us today, by Jesus from the Cross!
Surrender is not an inaction or a passive submission, it is an active assumption of a role or mindset that makes me look at purposes higher to my personal ones. Today we have so many personal plans, future dreams, expectations and aims that what God wants from us, what is God’s plan for us, the purposes that God wants to achieve in and through us, mean almost nothing to us. Jesus throws a challenge at us today, lifted high on the Cross – if we look up to the One who is lifted we shall live. The challenge is: Surrender, Surrended wholeheartedly to God our Father and Mother.
Jesus is the High Priest, the Sacrificial Lamb and the Sacrificial Altar at one and the same time. The Sufferings of Christ become the salvation of our beings. The Cross becomes the sign through which we are saved.
Sufferings in our lives have to be faced with a sense of surrender, that they may serve to be instruments that reveal the very significance of our life to us. The call is three fold: At times of struggles, to Surrender to the Lord and learn the ways of the Lord; at times of others’ struggle to Surrender ourselves in the service of the Lord, by empathising with, remaining with and sustaining our brothers and sisters so that they begin to learn the goodness of the Lord; and at all other times to Surrender to the Lord’s ways that we may convinced that what matters most in life is God’s will, even if it means to face hardships.
God, my Father and Mother, I surrender into your hands my spirit, my mind, my entire self, that I may live always giving glory to your Most Holy Name and making you known to all around me.
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.