Our Lord's loneliness during the Passion

Loneliness.

Even our Lord did not want to be alone before His Passion.

"With desire I have desired to eat this pasch with you, before I suffer." (St. Luke 22,15)

He loved His disciples. In this most intimate of all Passovers, He gave them Himself; His Body and Blood, the new and everlasting Covenant.

After the Pasch, He led them to the Garden of Gethsemane where he tells Peter, James, and John, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death: stay you here, and watch with me." (St. Matthew 26, 38)

Who is able to fathom this most bitter of all sorrows, save for the Mother of our Lord? He asks His disciples, "Stay you here, and watch with Me."

No one wants to be alone in their hour of need. 

Yet humanly speaking, we are abandoned all too often by human companions, and left in bitter sorrow alone.

Yet, we are never truly alone.

Jesus Christ the God-Man shares our sorrows, our sufferings, and yes, our loneliness. He of all men knows the sorrow and agony of loneliness.

Lord, forgive us for doubting Your nearness and solicitude for our souls.

Grant that we believe in Your divine caritas; that abandoned by men we may know that we are received by You, Redeemer of men and friend of sinners.

Prayer for the Virtue of Hope

Almighty God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, I thank You for your unfailing faithfulness to me.

I thank you for your nearness and gracious provision for me during my long and tumultuous life in this valley of tears.

I now place all my hopes in You alone; the hope of overcoming the world; the hope of resisting the relentless temptations to yield to my own sinful desires; the hope of being delivered from the assaults of the infernal accuser; and the hope of attaining everlasting life with my Savior Jesus Christ and my Mother in grace, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

You have kept my tears in your bottle, and measured consolations in proportion to each one far exceeding their bitterness. 

You have waited patiently for me when I foray into foolishness and sins, even mortal sins; You have tenderly called me back again and again when my vain desires deceived me. 

How could I ever doubt your Fatherly love and care for my soul?

Forgive me for wavering, my all-good and merciful Lord; forgive me for listening to those voices which poisoned me against childlike trust in Your faithfulness and sweetness. 

Keep my eyes fixed O God on the Innocent Lamb slain for me and the whole human race from before the foundations of the world, that I may never despair of your divine fidelity. Grant to me I beg You, O Good Shepherd the grace of supernatural hope, that my weak and faltering faith may not fail. O blessed fruit of the Holy Ghost! Hope in me, divine Paracletos, that when my own hope dims, You will work in me what I cannot obtain without Your assistance. 

Saint Augustine, pray for us.

Saint Monica, pray for us.

Mother of Divine Grace, pray for us.

A Cry for Mercy Beneath the Cross

O Good Master, I have nothing to offer Thee but my sins and guilt.

My faith is weak and full of imperfections. 

My good works are filthy rags, an embarrassment in light of Thy excessively generous gifts.

Fear of Thy just retribution covers me like a thick, black cloud, obscuring all view of anything but my culpability.

Even to pray, I feel resistance, as though some dark power menaces me.

But Thou O Lord, art love; Thou art to the Greeks agape and to the Hebrews ch'sed. No word in my native tongue approaches these renderings, so we say Thou art perfect charity.

In this do I hope; not in my prayers, not in my poor excuse for faith, not in my religious observance, not in my mediocre fasting or impoverished almsgiving. 

Only in this goodness and mercy of the divine Essence, which the Apostles teach us Thou art.

At the foot of Thy holy cross I tremble, ashamed, afraid.

How unfathomable is my debt to Thee, O Lord!

Only that grace which Thou pourest into my stony, cold heart can save me.

Only these actual graces - gratuitous gifts from your most merciful heart, pierced with the lance of my pride - can deliver me from my craven, unspiritual fear on the one hand and my insufferable arrogance and presumption on the other. 

When Thou judgest me at my death, consider these wounds of charity, Good Master, remember the terrible price you paid to ransom my soul, and not the contemptible vessel who receives the benefit of their merit. 

Grant to me O merciful and loving Jesus to persevere in the grace which You lavish upon sinners, and not to despair of my unworthiness but to remain immovably attached to your Passion on our behalf.

Amen.

The Cruelty of God

Since the Garden of Eden men have grappled with the Problem of Evil.

Why would an all-good, holy, just and benevolent Father-Creator engender billions of souls knowing that a great number - almost all by some Saints' estimation - would be eternally damned?

And how can we love such a God?

Isn't this the epitome of cruelty?

And look at the great servants and saints of God - hated, unjustly punished, persecuted, tortured, maligned, condemned, martyred.

If this is how God allows His friends to be treated, no wonder He has so few!

Lastly, even Christ Who commanded legions of powerful angels set such power aside to be abused at the hands of men and in the spirit of Satanic cruelty.

In our own lives we experience tragedy, abandonment, betrayal, rejection, are ostracized if we take a stand - however minor - for a just cause or for sacrality. 

Even those who are religious are often told their religion is lukewarm, formalist, empty of true supernatural faith, unworthy of any favor or attention from the Most High God. 

Everywhere we look we see this cruelty, this injustice, this chaos and perturbation. Often it follows us into our sleep where we are tormented by nightmares and anxious fears, even safely in our beds.

Why?

Where is the God Who is love?

I don't know the answer.

That is the dark reality of the problem of evil.

It is a mystery, and we are not given to know why God allows evil to prosper, souls to perish, eternity to be engulfed in tormenting flames for an uncountable number of them.

The standard answers are that God allows evil so that good may come from it, and that He made man free so that man could choose the good over the evil without coercion. 

This culminates at Golgotha where the most horrific evil conceivable - Deicide - the malicious torture and murder of God - takes place in the holiest city on earth and at the hands of its priests. 

Theologians, philosophers and mystics have in their own turn explained the great mystery of eternal salvation through the offering of Christ as divine Victim who propitiates the wrath of God - not for Himself, but for us sinners. 

The mangled body on the tree belongs to the Creator.

It is He Who hangs there between heaven and earth, blood surging from His hands and feet, in agony twisting to breathe and endure both the physical torments and the humiliating contempt of His own people. 

There is no other way to overcome evil we are told.

We must appropriate this sacrifice personally, to our own souls by our own free will. 

We must own the God-Man, condemned by the Jews, crucified by the Romans, abandoned by all but a tiny handful after He had spent His brief yet full life doing only good to the helpless. 

I do not understand any of this.

The problem of evil is NOT resolved for me by this mystery.

But there is even for my brute ignorance, something marvelous and all-encompassing about the Galilean impaled during Passover between two capital criminals. 

Why, Lord?

Wasn't there some other way?

Didn't You pray, "Abba Father, please let this cup pass from me?"

Stripes and thorns and nails and a spear thrust through your innocent heart - THIS is the way we must trod to be delivered from the consequences of our very real and personal sins?

I totter on the precipice of despair to weigh this moral equation on my utterly corrupt and inadequate conscience.

How can I follow you, Lord? Follow You here?

Here on Golgotha's bloody summit with the Blessed Virgin Mary?

I freely confess I have no answers.

The problem of evil remains. It is strong, convincing, logical, compelling, relentless, concrete, real, and we are all intimate with it.

This Lent I step out into the darkness of my greatest fear - that of eternal damnation - trembling, weak, scandalized, and unsure. I pray for the grace of hope. Only hope can overcome the Tempter's smooth and efficient logic. I cannot attain to any peace in my intellect, yet I know without the gratuitous gift of supernatural hope, I am and will be lost.

Son of David, we both know I deserve hell. Please don't let the enemy win. 

I need You.