We Crucify One Another

On Good Friday, the core issue that defeats human history is both revealed and resolved. 

The central issue at work is the human inclination to hate, despise and kill others, instead of dying ourselves - to our own illusions and selfish love. 

Knowing this, Jesus dies “for” us, “in solidarity with us.”

Jesus’ crucified body is a picture of what humanity is doing and what God suffers with, in and through us. A picture of divine solidarity with our pain and our problems. 

Whenever you see an image of the crucified Jesus, know that it is the central message unveiled. It reveals what humanity is doing itself and to one another. 

We crucify one another. 

Humanity hates and attacks what it has every reason to love: itself, God, and the rest of creation.

None of us really knows what we are doing until the outer crucifix becomes the inner resistance to every act of human war, torture, starvation, disease, abuse, oppression, and injustice. 

On the cross, the veil between the Holy and the unholy is torn from top to bottom, the curtain of his body becomes a living opening through which we all can walk into the Holy of Holies, which on different levels is both our own soul and the very heart of God.

Nothing changed in heaven on Good Friday, but everything potentially changed on earth.

Transformative Suffering

Living with pain and suffering is inherent in the human condition. In other words, suffering is not negotiable. To be alive is to suffer. And the suffering will be transformative in our lives: it will either make us bitter and miserable, or it will make us compassionate and more alive. 

Like Jesus, we need to learn how to hold on to the pain in our lives, to be present to it, to surrender to it until we’ve learned its lessons. 

This is a great teaching moment where you have the possibility of breaking through to a deeper level of faith and consciousness. There is a greater Divine life beneath the surface of our pain.

If you can surrender and hold on to the pain of being human, God will transform you through it. And then you will be an instrument of transformation for others.

As an example of holding the pain, picture Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Standing would not be the normal posture of a Jewish woman who is supposed to wail and lament and show pain externally. She’s holding the pain instead. She is present to it, surrendered to it.

Mary is in complete solidarity with the mystery of life and death. She’s trying to say, “There’s something deeper happening here. How can I absorb it just as Jesus is absorbing it?” 

Until you find a way to be a transformer of your pain, you will pass the pain onto others.

Jesus on the cross and Mary standing by the cross are images of transformative religion. They are never transmitting the pain to others. 

They hold the suffering… until it becomes resurrection! 

That’s the core mystery. It takes our whole life to comprehend this, and then to become God’s “new creation” (Galatians 6:15). 

Unfortunately, we have the natural instinct to fix pain, to control it, or even, foolishly, to try to understand it. The ego always insists on understanding. That’s why Jesus praises a certain quality even more than love, and he calls it faith. It is the ability to stand on the threshold, until you move to a deeper level where it all eventually makes sense in God’s grace.

As Holy Week approaches, we are invited to join our sufferings to Jesus’, and be part of the process of transformation and freedom for ourselves, for our families, and for the world.

Lighting Up the World

The season of Lent is an invitation to the awakening of the Heart! Our heart for God, and our heart for one another. It is a season to renew our journey away from focus on self to a focus on the Heart that is God - and God’s Heart is in you waiting to be discovered and lived out of. 

Lent and Life is a journey of the opening up to the HEART of all hearts.

“Sir, we would like to see Jesus”

To see Jesus is to see the heart of God, to see Jesus is to see the face of Love. This loving face, this loving awareness is at the very centre of your soul.

In order for us to “see” Christ we must clear away the clutter and illusions of our small and false self. Lent’s invitation is to learn to die to this self.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit.” 

“Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” 

Jesus is teaching us that the path to genuine and authentic life is the dying to self-centeredness. In biblical terms, it is the “ruler of this world” that beacons us away from the freedom of God to the slavery of self-centeredness.

“And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”

The way of the Cross is the way of kenosis, of self emptying, and centering on Jesus, of seeing Jesus, the face of Love.

The way of the Cross, of our Lenten journey, is the way of the heart, of a purified and opening heart.

“I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah)

“A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and your Holy Spirit take not from me.” (Psalm 51)

Let us surrender our hearts to the Lord of Love, that we may see less of self, and more of the face of Love in every other person.

That, my friends, will light up the world.

Not even Death can Separate us from the Love of God

The Hebrew story of Moses and the lifting up of the serpent on a pole is a foreshadowing of what will be fulfilled in the lifting up of Jesus on the Cross. 

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

When we prayerfully reflect on Jesus and the power of the cross and resurrection, we come to the realization  that even death cannot separate us from Love that is God. And in this spiritual awakening, new, inclusive and eternal life opens us before us. 

The crucifixion of Jesus is not as much about “paying” a price for our sins, as it is about revealing to us that neither sin nor death can separate us from the Love of God. With this freedom we can become more aware of and live out of the Love that is Divinity within us.

To know and experience Divine Love is to know and experience eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

This verse captures the entire Gospel!

God’s Love keeps us from perishing.

To know God’s love is to be drawn into a life without end.

Lent is a season of preparation to lean more completely into the fullness of the life and love of the Resurrection.

As we enter more deeply into the mystery of the Divine Love, let us prayerfully become more intentional in inviting and drawing others into that very same life of Love. It is for the salvation of the world - one awakened soul at a time.