Finding the Face of the Father

The people stood there watching, and the leaders kept jeering at him saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, the chosen one….  If you are king of the Jews, save yourself.”  This jeering was not the first time.  Didn’t the devil tempt our Lord in the desert in the same manner?   There was an inscription over his head: “THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.” In his incarnation, in the shared fullness of humanity and creation, Jesus cries out in agony, suffering, pain, abandoned, disowned, rejected, outcast.  (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mt 27: 46)

            One of the criminals hanging in crucifixion blasphemed him: “Aren’t you the Messiah?  Then save yourself and us.”  The crowds, the soldiers, and one hung beside him are mocking, taunting the Son of Man!  But the other one rebuked him: “Have you no fear of God, seeing you are under the same sentence?  We deserve it after all.  We are only paying the price for what we have done, but this man has done nothing wrong.”  He then said, “Jesus, remember me when you enter upon your reign.”  In anguish and despair, did Jesus find validation, hope, strength, trust in the eyes of God, in the eyes of the Father mirrored in the face of the criminal?  And Jesus replied, “I assure you: this day you will be with me in paradise.”

            It was now around midday, and darkness came over the whole land ….  Jesus uttered a loud cry and said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  Luke 23: 35-46

How is it that Jesus, a man who never sought his own advantage over anyone, who healed the blind, sick, and lame, who raised loved ones from the dead, who filled those in his presence with love, compassion, and mercy, who fed the hungry, could be tried and put to death?  From my position in the crowd, I’ve always blended Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion.  I grew to believe Jesus’ intense spiritual and mental anguish and isolation in the garden to be far more distressing and despairing than any physical pain.  Denying Jesus, lusting for power, materialism, violence, and the disregard for life hung our Savior upon a cross. 

I cling to my moments of doubt refusing to let go of my pain, my lack of faith to surrender to the Father as I watch and consider Jesus, fully human, in his moments of doubt to surrender.  Where was God?  Did He, too, abandon Jesus condemned by those he loved?  We are told God is always present.  Where was God at that moment?  Was He present in the thief hanging beside Jesus? The thief spoke words of awareness.

 When Jesus looked into the criminal’s eyes, who did he see?

Franciscan author, Fr. Richard Rohr writes, “We can’t seem to know the good news that we are God’s beloveds on our own.  It has to be mirrored to us.  We’re essentially social beings.  Another has to tell us we are beloved and good.”  

How do we allow others to be the face of God to us?

I know I receive Christ illumined in the faces of men in PX90, parishioners, family, friends, students, occasional strangers ….

Though we may be corrupted, how can we still mirror the face of God, provide hope, lift others, ask for forgiveness, give mercy? 

God doesn’t love you or me because we are good.  God loves us because God is good!  I am incredibly humbled knowing I am often in the crowd persecuting, jeering the Man carrying the cross to his death only for Him to reveal his generous, undying love for me!