Archive for April, 2010
A Prayer for Good Friday
Friday, April 2nd, 2010 | Lent Meditations, Spiritual Disciplines | No Comments
Then Pilate turned Jesus over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus away. Carrying the cross by himself, he went to the place called Place of the Skull (in Hebrew, Golgotha). There they nailed him to the cross. Two others were crucified with him, one on either side, with Jesus between them.
-John 19:16-18
O dear Lord, what can I say to you?
Is there any word that could come from my mouth,
any thought? any sentence?
You died for me, you gave all for my sins,
you not only became man for me
but also suffered the most cruel death for me.
Is there any response?
I wish that I could find a fitting response,
but in contemplating your holy passion and death
I can only confess humbly to you
that the immensity of your divine love
makes any response seem totally inadequate.
Your body is broken, your head wounded,
your hands and feet are split open by nails,
your side is pierced.
It is fulfilled. It is accomplished.
Sweet Lord, gracious Lord,
generous Lord, forgiving Lord,
I adore you, I praise you, I thank you.
You have made all things new
through your passion and death.
Your cross has been planted in this world
as the new sign of hope.
Let me always live under your cross, O Lord,
and proclaim the hope of your cross unceasingly.
Amen.
-Henri Nouwen
The Last Supper
Thursday, April 1st, 2010 | Lent Meditations | No Comments
As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body.”
And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, “Each of you drink from it, for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many. Mark my words—I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”
Then they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. -Matthew 26:26-30
On Thursday night of His last week, Jesus and His closest followers celebrated the Jewish feast of Passover together. The Passover feast was (and is) a commemoration of when God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt, and when He “passed over” their homes, not allowing their firstborn sons to die in the 10th plague as the Egyptians’ sons did.
Every element of the Passover feast was already full of symbolism, but Jesus established a new meaning for the bread and cup of the traditional feast. The bread represented his body, broken for us. The cup represented his blood, poured out for us on the cross. When we celebrate communion together, as many of us will on Good Friday evening, we are continuing this tradition, commemorating the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and participating in something holy and beautiful practiced by countless followers of Jesus over the past two thousand years.
In the Passover feast, they celebrated the freedom of God’s people from slavery in Egypt; we celebrate our freedom from slavery to sin and death. During the Passover feast, they put a lamb’s blood on the doorposts of their house so that their sons would be spared by God; we remember the Lamb’s (Jesus’s) blood being spilled for us so that we may be spared.
Father, today I remember Jesus’ last full day on this earth before His death, the day of the Last Supper that we still remember and practice. Please help me to meditate often today on Jesus’ love and sacrifice as we prepare ourselves to meet together tomorrow. Amen.
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