Meditations on Holy Week

When I made my first confession a few weeks ago, after going through the list that I had made and confessing each one, I ended with the confession that my greatest and most grievous sin of all was that I had done all the others while already knowing Christ. This was not empty rhetoric. I have known him as long as I can remember; I made my first confession of sin and invitation to his lordship when I was four, of my own volition, alone in my room, not being led by any other person. And thus every sin I have ever committed since then has, in addition to its own sinfulness, been to commit the infinitely more heinous sins of grieving the Holy Spirit and subjecting Christ again to his crucifixion (Heb 6). The Catholic church recognizes this truth: in the Tridentine catechism it says:

We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt. And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews. As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, "None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." We, however, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him. Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins. (emphasis mine)

I have long had this idea that in his passion, the Lord experienced in a very real way the weight and horror of each and every sin and evil ever committed by mankind. That it was not just some sort of symbolic act, but that he, in a mystical manner, re-lived (or pre-lived) them all. That he experienced, for example, both the horror, pain, and shame of the victim of a violent crime and, worse yet, the guilt and remorse of the offender (perhaps experiencing remorse for the crime even, or maybe especially, when the actual sinner didn't). There's a superhero movie in which one of the hero's powers is to grab hold of the perpetrator of some horror, and make him experience his crime from the victim's perspective. I've pictured it like that, but times infinity.

It turns out that I am not the first one to have this idea: it has been given to at least one mystic of the church. Anne Catherine Emmerich describes, in one of her visions:

When Jesus left His disciples, I saw a number of frightful figures surrounding Him in an ever-narrowing circle. His sorrow and anguish of soul continued to increase, and He was trembling all over when He entered the grotto to pray, like a wayworn traveler hurriedly seeking shelter from a sudden storm, but the awful visions pursued Him even there, and became more and more clear and distinct. Alas! this small cavern appeared to contain the awful picture of all the sins which had been or were to be committed from the fall of Adam to the end of the world, and of the punishment which they deserved. It was here, on Mount Olivet, that Adam and Eve took refuge when driven out of Paradise to wander homeless on earth, and they had wept and bewailed themselves in this very grotto.

I felt that Jesus, in delivering Himself up to Divine Justice in satisfaction for the sins of the world, caused His divinity to return, in some sort, into the bosom of the Holy Trinity, concentrated Himself, so to speak, in His pure, loving and innocent humanity, and strong only in His ineffable love, gave it up to anguish and suffering. He fell on His face, overwhelmed with unspeakable sorrow, and all the sins of the world displayed themselves before Him, under countless forms and in all their real deformity. He took them all upon himself, and in His prayer offered His own adorable Person to the justice of His Heavenly Father, in payment for so awful a debt. But Satan, who was enthroned amid all these horrors, and even filled with diabolical joy at the sight of them, let loose his fury against Jesus, and displayed before the eyes of His soul increasingly awful visions, at the same time addressing His adorable humanity in words such as these: “Takest thou even this sin upon thyself? Art thou willing to bear its penalty? Art thou prepared to satisfy for all these sins?” 

I have experienced faint echoes of this myself. Some years ago, after my son had come back from his first combat tour, he was suffering greatly, and I asked the Lord to let me bear some of his suffering for him. And he granted my request. I was immediately plunged into terrible emotional pain and mental torment, to the point of having memories which weren't mine, which lasted for quite a long time, weeks or months, afterward. And when I talked to my son again some time afterward, he told me that his burden had been considerably lightened just after the last time we'd talked.

It happened again, far more briefly, just the other day. While I prayed, I was overcome with the overwhelming deep pain, anguish, shame, and horror of a woman who had been assaulted. I don't know who or exactly what this was about: whether it was one specific person, or perhaps just women in general who have suffered it. Whether it was about a stranger or someone I know (unfortunately, there are several candidates). Or whether it was past, present, or (possible) future (I prayed that, if it was possible, that whoever and whatever it was might be prevented). I have always hated and detested this crime more than all others, but I had never truly felt the emotional depths of the victims' suffering like this. I hope I actually was helping someone, in some way.

Not to imply at all that any of this compares with Jesus's agony in the garden. To bring us back to the point, it is only in and through his agony that ours acquires any transcendent meaning or eternal value. Also, whereas Jesus's suffering was only on others' behalf, as he was truly innocent, anything I experience also comes back around, in the end, to my own sin and guilt. Although I may not be guilty of a particular crime, I still, in a way, share in its guilt, by having partaken of and participated in some sin of lesser magnitude but the same species, as in the parallels which Jesus drew, that anger equals murder and lust equals adultery.

This all ties, unintentionally (on my part) back into my prayer and meditation on the Sorrowful Mysteries during this Lent. I'm wondering now if perhaps it is a Grace given to me through those intentions.

Here, if you want to meditate further on these things, is an hour (or so) long podcast reading from and reflecting on the Passion and the Sorrowful Mysteries, from the perspectives of Scripture, mystical revelation, and forensic science. I especially love the point made that 'Gethsemane' means olive press, and the garden was the place where olives were crushed to produce pure oil. And that this evokes a beautiful and sorrowful picture of Jesus's human soul being crushed under the weight of all the sin which he was bearing.

Even more so, I am deeply moved by the reflections (and here it ties back in once again to my own spiritual journey) on how the Passion was experienced by the Blessed Mother of the Lord and how, in praying the Rosary and meditating on the mysteries, we are experiencing it through and with her.