Christ Jesus is Able to Sympathize with our Human Weaknesses
We started this holy week with a reflection on the priesthood of Christ, how he is a
priest and a victim, and how we share in the priesthood of Christ as Baptized persons. The letter to the Hebrews tells us that, “when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come…he entered once for all into the Holy place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:11-12). And as you know from your theology class, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, has both the divine nature and the human nature perfectly united in his person. As God, he has a nature that is incapable of suffering, but for our sake, he took upon himself a human nature that is capable of suffering, so that “He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, for he himself has been tested in every way yet without sin… In his human nature he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the One who was able to save him from death, and he was heard… he learned obedience from what he suffered;…and he became the source of everlasting salvation for all who obey him.”
The passion narrative from the gospels gives us an account of what he suffered, and we meditate on it more intimately during the stations of the Cross, we come to a deeper appreciation of Christ’s ministry as a priest and a victim. He is the offeror and the offering himself. All this had been foretold by Isaiah the prophet, “Who would believe what we have heard? He grew up like a sapling before him, like a root out of the thirsty ground; there is no beauty in him to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. Despised and avoided by people, a man of sorrows, he knew suffering, one of those from whom people hide their faces, we held him in no respect. Yet it was our sins that he bore…like a lamb led to slaughter, he was silent” (Isaiah 53:1-12). Christ knows each and everyone’s sufferings and sorrows, he knows the homeless, the oppressed, the sick, the abandoned, the despised, the hungry, for he himself went through these trials; he was betrayed by a close friend, thrown into prison, slapped in the face, scourged, he felt pain, falsely accused, mocked, he subjected himself to all the limitations of our human nature, he was hungry, thirsty, he was exhausted, he was stripped of his family, his friends, his cloths, nay, his skin. He felt extreme shame, standing naked before the people. Yes, Jesus knows what it is like to suffer, he took all of it, he united his divinity to our human nature, he is one with us. You see, my friends, that everyone can have a claim on Jesus, everyone can identify with Jesus. He is able to sympathize with us, and to save us from these trials, if only we go to him and ask him for mercy. We cannot say, for example, “God does not understand me,” or “God does not know my sufferings” and be angry at God. Oh yes, God knows and understands your sufferings, He was the recipient of all the insults, mockeries, injustices, pains, and so forth, and he nailed it to the tree, so that we should never say, “God does not know what it is to suffer.” He is the only remedy to suffering and evil.
Let us now approach the Cross, the throne of mercy, the instrument of our salvation, with a deep sense of reverence and respect, and with the utmost gratitude to God. Let us return the same love to Jesus, for, he has loved us immensely to the point of death.
Let us carefully consider this gift of love and freedom as we venerate the wood of the Cross on which hung the life of the world. As the poet and musician Isaac Watts so beautifully put it:
1 When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.
2 Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast save in the death of Christ, my God! All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them through his blood.
3 See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?
4 Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
~ Homily given on Good Friday, 2023.
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