Monday, the Sixth Week of Lent

   We are in Holy Week; the final week of Lent.  This is the time to renew and heighten whatever devotions we have practiced during Lent in preparation for the greatest gift ever given.  This week we look forward to a great contradiction.  We sorrow for our Lord’s crucifixion on the cross but look forward with joy to His glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday.  From the greatest evil ever committed comes the greatest gift ever bestowed.

   In a sermon he gave St. Augustine said, “Accordingly he effected a wonderful exchange with us, through mutual sharing:  we gave him the power to die, he will give us the power to live.”  Consider the full impact of this exchange.

   As God, Jesus could not die.  Just as God, the Farther and God, the Holy Spirit are eternal, so too is God, the Son.  Yet He desired to pay the price for our sins.  A price which required not only death, but the death of one who was sinless.  In order to pay that debt Jesus gave up His divinity for a time in order to become one with us.  By accepting birth as a human, Jesus accepted death as a human.  Not only death but all the pain, challenges and temptations experienced by humanity.

   By sharing our mortal life and death with us, Jesus chose to share His divinity with us.  He suffered death as a man in order to give us life eternal.  What a magnificent trade.  In exchange for death we received a share in the divinity of Christ!

   Especially this week we need to think of the suffering that we endure from time to time.  The sickness, the heartache, the pain and death which comes to all men.  Then we need to consider what great love God has for us that would cause Him to give us Jesus not only to suffer those things with us, but to give us eternal life in the process.

   Nothing we suffer can compare with the gift given us by Jesus.  While always sorrowing for His death, we look forward to the ultimate gift of salvation and life eternal He gave through His life, death and resurrection.