Prayer Intention for the Week

September 2 - 8, 2018


That the Holy Spirit may inspire us to think of, speak about and do the things that would glorify God the Father and cause the salvation of souls. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord and Friend. Amen.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Station XIII: Jesus is taken down from the Cross


The dead body of Jesus was taken down from the cross by His friends [see John 19: 38-40], Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus due to his fear of the Jews [see John 19:38], and Nicodemus, the Pharisee who visited Him one night and to whom He discussed the importance of being born from above; to be born again of the Spirit [see John 3]

Jesus' death completes the mission of Jesus the Man. Like any other man, He was born of a woman, lived among other men, and died like one. Though the Jews were taunting Him that if He will just go down from the cross they would believe He never did a spectacular act of freeing Himself from being crucified. No! It was not part of God's plan. His mission was not to establish a carnival; He was not an entertainer nor an escape artist. He was sent to the world in order to free mankind from its bondage to sin. And like the sacrificial lamb who must be slaughtered, He must die as a sacrifice. 

This was to be the last bloody sacrifice that God the Father required to ever take place. After that the Church offers what the Prophet Malachi wrote as a clean, pure oblation offered to the Father by the nations from the farthest east and the farthest west [see Malachi 1:11]: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist!

Jesus ends the bloody sacrifice of animals. After all, they are merely prefiguration of His supreme offering. Moreover, they were not capable of freeing people from bondage to sin forever and so these sacrifices using animals have to be repeated again and again. But not the Lord's sacrifice which cannot be repeated nor ever duplicated by anyone anymore. The Church merely commemorates this supreme sacrifice through the celebration of the Holy Mass which according to the Apostle Paul will have to be commemorated again and again until He comes back again on that time in glory [see 1 Corinthians 11:26].

Our lives must also be living sacrifices - not that we can duplicate the Lord's sacrifice - but as members of His body, the Church, for the continuing act of salvation fulfilled by the Lord has been entrusted to the Church to which we belong.

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