Were our Hearts Not Burning? (Lk 24:32)
Fr. Paul Ward                                                                      Home

Homily

Friday, March 25, 2005, St. Paul’s on the Lake, Grosse Pointe

The Celebration of the Passion of Our Lord

The Hymn of Victory of the Cross of Christ

The following is inspired by the Latin hymn, Pange lingua.[1]

Sing, my tongue, of the glorious struggle of battles, and declare a noble triumph on an ignoble tree, and how great of a redeemer was immolated for the whole world, and of the countless goods this brought upon all the children of the light.[2]

For in ancient times the first man and woman, snared in the serpent’s deception, ran headlong into death with a disobedient bite into a deadly fruit. But it was deadly not because it had poison, but rather because of the one biting it; for, nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’… What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean.[3] And out of the hearts of the parents of all men came disobedience. Yet now the tree of death is vanquished by the tree of life.

Since that ancient and dark day of the first of all sins, all forms of evil assailed humanity as predators, evil enemies with evil plans and evil means. And a misled humanity claimed to be wise, while they became fools; for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hard hearts,[4] and in this way the wrath of God was being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, so that men are without excuse.[5]

Yet in the fullness of time, sent forth from the bosom of the Father, one was born of a Virgin, God came to earth in the flesh. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the Only Begotten, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.[6] It was upon the cross, there alone, that God’s glory was fully revealed. For this he was born, for this he came into the world,[7] not to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.[8]

Now, three decades later, the moment had come to show us his love unto the end.[9] He devoted himself to his passion, which he willed for our good. He became for us the paschal lamb, immolated on the altar of the cross. He sacrificed himself for our sins once for all when he offered himself.[10] He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to his Father,[11] who would soon defeat death in Joseph’s tomb.

Behold before us the vinegar, the oil, the spittle, the wood, the nails, the lance. A crown of thorns, his ripped and bloodied garments, the earth washed with the blood of the Messiah. What a river it was that spilled forth from his pierced heart, bleeding onto the earth, flowing upon passers-by, filling the land and the waters and the skies, surging into all the centuries before him and after him. As in the time of Noah, this new flood destroys his enemies and all wickedness, and the wood of the new ark is not any boat measured in cubits, but the wood of his saving cross.

Faithful cross, uniquely noble tree among all others. No forest could ever have born the flower, the seed, the sapling or oak one like you. Oh how you bore him who first carried you: the saving wood, by a saving nail, bore the saving weight of the Son of Mary, the Son of God. You alone were worthy to hold up the price of the world on your branches, two branches like arms, arms as of a scale measuring the weight of all the sins of the whole world and of all ages against the weight of what God did for man.

On the cross one victory was accomplished, that of the payment in justice for our sins. Our debt was so great, that only Jesus, the Son of God, could pay it, no living human ever could, nor group of humans. But the payment in justice was not enough, God wished to make happen, in the world, his victory over sin and death, which would occur on third day.

After the Lord died, he descended into hell,[12] to free all the souls of the just from the time of Adam to that very moment. They “awaited their savior,”[13] he came and revealed himself to them much as he did to us, and so “the gospel was preached even to the dead.”[14] For He alone holds the “keys of Death and Hades,”[15] so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”[16]

Go therefore and speak to your spouses and children, to your family and friends, of what good the Lord has done for you. Put aside the works of death, do penance and wait for the third day, when the power of the new life will definitively conquer sin and death. Follow your savior along the loving way of the cross, suffering for the glory of God and the salvation of those around you. Take up the cross as a Standard, as the flag that leads an army into battle, and fearlessly follow the road of the straight and narrow. Hail cross, hail cross, our tree of life, our only hope.