It is finished April 14

Piety

Jesus, you walked today burdened with your cross and my sins. Forgive me for ever having forgotten your ordeal.

Jesus, I am in the crowd, choose me to help you with your cross as you help me with mine.

Jesus, I am in the crowd, choose me to wipe your face of the blood and sweat as you wipe away my sins today and everyday I seek your reconciliation.

Jesus, I am in the crowd, help me to understand the ordeal of crucifixion so I will understand the trials you put me through and accept the will of the Father as you have modeled for me throughout Lent and Life.

Forgive me for I know not what I do every day when I abandon you. Grant me the promise of paradise for stealing you love without serving others through the obedience of faith. Ask your Mother to be my prayer partner, my “acompañante,” my companion and guide. Let me thirst for you always so that when your mission is finished, I will assume it. Into God’s hands and your hands may I commend my life so his will might be done through me. Amen.

Study

You are invited to encounter Jesus today in his agony, his arrest, his trial and as he walks with his cross to bear our sins -- the verdict he accepted with grace and love and faith.
http://www.usccb.org/nab/041406.shtml

“[I]t was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; but the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all.” Isaiah 53:4-6

The enormity of today’s act of sacrifice for me, for you, for those we see in Church everyday, is impossible to comprehend. It would be easier if I could say Jesus died for those other sinners. Yet he died for me, the sinner. You, the sinner.

It was MY infirmities that he bore, my suffering that he endured. He was pierced for my offenses. Crushed for my sins. Upon him was the chastisement that makes me whole. By his stripes, I was healed. I had gone astray as late as yesterday. I denied him three times thirty. I betrayed him. I fell asleep on him. I followed my own way and the way of our society. But the LORD laid upon himself the guilt of me.

As Max Lucado wrote, “He chose the nails so we do not have to.”

Action

Meditate on the last seven words Jesus spoke. What is He asking you to do now that He was crucified for our sins?

"Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

"Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise."

"Woman, behold your son. Behold your Mother."

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me."

"I thirst."

"It is finished."

"Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit."