Day 87: Christ’s Life as Offering (606-612)

• It’s Day 87!! (And I’m all caught up finally!! 😃)

• GOSH!!

• We have been walking with Christ in His Passion and Death

• Today is CHRIST OFFERED HIMSELF TO HIS FATHER FOR OUR SINS

• CHRIST’S WHOLE LIFE IS AN OFFERING TO THE FATHER

• We talked about how Christ’s whole life is a mystery

• Even the Incarnation is a YES of obedient love to His Father

• THAT IS SO CRITICAL!!

• All of the obedience that He offered to Mary and Joseph

• Every breath that He took on this planet was an offering to the Father

• So when He gets to those last moments of His life, we have Paragraph 607, “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour.”

• THE LAMB WHO TAKES AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD

• So there is this SACRIFICE

• Not only is Jesus the Suffering Servant who silently allows Himself to be led to the slaughter

• Jesus is also the PASCHAL LAMB who takes away the sins of the world

• Paragraph 608 says, “Christ’s whole life expresses his mission: ‘to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.’”

• It is NOT the depth of Christ’s SUFFERING as much as it is the depth of Christ’s LOVE that entered into His suffering

• So this offering to the Father is not because the Father wanted to see so much pain

• That is a distorted interpretation of what is happening in the Passion

• BUT…

• JESUS FREELY EMBRACED THE FATHER’S REDEEMING LOVE

• He loved His Father NO MATTER WHAT IT COST

• He loves us NO MATTER WHAT IT COST

• It’s not the fact that Christ SUFFERED so much

• It is the DEPTH OF HIS LOVE

• THAT IS WHAT SAVES US!!

• JESUS FREELY EMBRACED THE FATHER’S REDEEMING LOVE

• THAT WAS FREE!!

• A FREE GIFT OF LOVE!!

• AT THE LAST SUPPER JESUS ANTICIPATED THE FREE OFFERING OF HIS LIFE

• So how do we know that Christ laid down His life and that no one TAKES IT FROM HIM?

• The next day it seems like all these people have power over Him

• Jesus even says, “You would have no power over me unless it was granted from above.”

• BUT…

• We know that Jesus freely laid down His life on Friday because we know that He freely laid down His life at the Last Supper on Thursday

• As a sign that this is a FREE GIFT of His life on the Cross, we have the FREE OFFERING OF HIS LIFE AT THE LAST SUPPER IN THE EUCHARIST

• WHICH IS JUST INCREDIBLE!!

• Jesus instituted the Eucharist because THAT IS HOW HE WANTS TO BE WORSHIPED

• THAT WILL BE THE MEMORIAL OF THIS SACRIFICE!!

• SO CRITICAL!!

• THE AGONY AT GETHSEMANI

• So we have these pieces 

• CHRIST’S WHOLE LIFE IS AN OFFERING TO THE FATHER

• THE LAMB WHO TAKES AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD

• Jesus is not only the Suffering Servant but He is also the Paschal Lamb

• Jesus freely offers Himself 

• Jesus freely LOVES the Father and embraces the Father’s Will

• In this, Jesus gives us the Eucharist

• In this, Jesus undergoes REAL ANGUISH and REAL SUFFERING in the Garden and beyond

• To be able to meditate on this and have new insight into Christ’s heart, let’s pray to our Father right now!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, give us insight into the heart of your Son, Jesus Christ. Give us insight into your heart. Give us insight into your Will and how that unfolds in the middle of this broken and in the middle of this beautiful world. Lord God, in our sufferings help us to have the trust that Jesus had. Lord God, in our confusion help us to have the love that Jesus had. Lord, in our lives help us to have that same offering, that same willingness to offer everything in our lives to you as Jesus offered everything, His whole life, as an offering to you. Help us to trust you and to love you, for you are love. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• WOW!!

• POWERFUL!!

• THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!

• Let’s recap some of these HINGE MOMENTS

• CHRIST’S WHOLE LIFE IS AN OFFERING TO THE FATHER

• From the first moment of the Incarnation, EVERYTHING is “I do what the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.” (Paragraph 606)

• When He gets to the last day of His life He asks the question, “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour.”

• In the Garden of Gethsemani He prays, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…”

• Paragraph 612 says, “Thus he expresses the horror that death represented for his human nature.”

• Jesus allowed Himself not only to enter into death

• BUT…

• Also in some crazy MYSTERIOUS way, He entered into the HORROR that death represented for His human nature

• FOR OUR HUMAN NATURE!!

• He does it in a UNIQUE WAY

• Paragraph 612 continues, “Like ours, his human nature is destined for eternal life; but unlike ours, it is perfectly exempt from sin, the cause of death…By accepting in his human will that the Father’s will be done, he accepts his death as redemptive, for ‘he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.’”

• WHICH IS JUST INCREDIBLE!!

• Why?

• Jesus is not only the Suffering Servant

• Jesus is also the Paschal Lamb who takes away the sins of the world

• The Lamb of God that John the Baptist says has a CONTEXT

• Not just because lambs are cuddly and cute (AND DELICIOUS!!! NOMNOMNOM 😉)

• The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is not cute and cuddly

• The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is the SACRIFICE

• That SACRIFICE is in some MYSTERIOUS way a foreshadowing of the ATONEMENT

• A foreshadowing of REDEMPTION

• A foreshadowing of FORGIVENESS

• Jesus is the TRUE lamb of God who TRULY takes away the sins of the world 

• AMAZING!!

• He does this FREELY

• He LOVES His Father

• He OBEYS His Father

• BUT…

• He does this FREELY

• That sign of that free gift is THE EUCHARIST

• IT IS REMARKABLE!!

• Paragraph 611 says, “The Eucharist that Christ institutes at that moment will be the memorial of his sacrifice. Jesus includes the apostles in his own offering and bids them perpetuate it. By doing so, the Lord institutes his apostles as priests of the New Covenant.”

• THAT IS INCREDIBLE!!

• We get to experience this EVERY DAY if we want

• We can go to Mass and be PARTICIPANTS in what Jesus Himself has done

• The Catechism in a Year is not just about information transfer

• IT IS ABOUT TRANSFORMATION!!

• It’s not just about data

• IT IS ABOUT CONVERSION!!

• It’s not about our minds having new facts in it

• NO!!

• OUR HEARTS HAVE MORE SPACE TO LOVE GOD BECAUSE OF HIS GRACE 

• BECAUSE WE ARE GETTING TO KNOW WHO HE IS IN A DEEPER WAY

• If you have not yet had the opportunity to go to Mass today, take that next step

• We get to be part of that MEMORIAL

• Part of that OFFERING of Jesus to His Father

• Why?

• BECAUSE HE LOVES HIS FATHER!!

• Paragraph 606 says, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.”

• AND ALSO BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU!!

• IT IS JUST INCREDIBLE!!

• WE CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT!!

• WE CAN HARDLY IMAGINE IT!!

• BUT IT IS TRUE!!

• HOW MUCH GOD LOVES YOU!!

• Fr. Mike is praying that YOU KNOW THAT TRUTH

• Fr. Miks is praying that WE CAN LIVE THAT TRUTH

• Let’s pray that we can let that truth CHANGE OUR LIVES

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other!!

• I cannot WAIT to see you tomorrow!!