Saturday, March 24: John 19- Torture, insults, humiliation and death.

Jesus’ final hours were wracked with pain… the worst kind of pain humans can devise. It was a horrible day and horrendous series of events.

John 19 does not hide what happened and yet it does not glorify or titillate readers with every gory detail. What people did to Jesus was reported truthfully but not graphically.

God shows us what Jesus went through to bring us salvation. God wants us to see human nature at its raw and lowest self.  What we can do to other human beings is despicable. But the gore and inhumanity of what happened to Jesus was not the point or the focus.

What Jesus offered humanity and how He endured the intensity of His final hours with dignity, grace and love was God’s point.

Scan the few words of Jesus in this chapter. They paint the picture of a man in control, despite what He is enduring. They reveal a man who could love and care for those He loves even during His most excruciating moments. They show a man who though in need –I am thirsty– died at peace –‘it is finished’.

To the bitter end Jesus carried out God’s plan of salvation and because Jesus did, we can live in relationship with the Spirit, Father and Son.

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down, now scornfully surrounded with thorns, thine only crown: how pale thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn! How does that visage languish which once was bright as morn!...

 

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