God shows his love for us even when all we see is gruesome – Mk 15:42-45

Continuing my Old College series on the the Seven Sorrows of Mary with taking the body down from the cross.

As it had already become late, since it was the day of Preparation (before the Sabbath),

Joseph of Arimathea, an honored member of the council who was also waiting for the kingdom of God,

Dared to go to Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus.

Pilate was amazed that he was already dead and called to the centurion and asked him if Jesus had already died.

When he had found that out from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph.

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How do you have hope, when all you have is a dead body?  When you see suffering, when you see the marks of thorns, nails, whips, and you feel their effect in the graying stiffening smelling corpse that’s all you have left, how can you have hope?  When you know that on a deeper level than physical causes of death, that the real cause was human hands, the hands of sinners, created in the image and likeness of God but fallen… just like you, how do you have hope?

What really killed Jesus was our sin, not nails.  What really held him to the cross was love, not nails.  Do you really think that the man who raised the dead, who walked on water, calmed storms, fed multitudes and gave sight to the blind could be held to the cross by mere nails?  That corpse that Pilate granted Joseph reveals the stark contrast of human sin and divine love from every angle, at every viewing.

To his religious suffering terribly for the sake of the mission in Algeria, Moreau wrote: “Let Jesus crucified be our mirror.”  Reflected in the mirror of that corpse, we see ourselves in plain relief – sinner and beloved.  How to have hope is to know that God is more powerful than we can ever imagine.  Our hope doesn’t derive from our own merits, but precisely from our weakness in comparison to God’s strength; God’s strength revealed in the poverty of the cross.  God’s love triumphs over sin; life beats out death.

In his letter announcing the Year of Faith, Pope Benedict told us that “Faith grows when it is lived as an experience of love received.”  Well, that’s true of hope too.  Hope grows, in fact hope can only exist, as a fruit of the experience of loved received.  Be deeply aware of God’s love for you, and even when all you see is gruesome death, you’ll be a man with hope to bring.