As Published in our Journal “The Anglican Tradition”, 2006
It is, indeed, a day for kneeling, as never at another time, at the foot of the cross, and confessing and bewailing our sinfulness and our sins. It is a day for endeavoring to realize, as on no other day, that He who hangs upon that cross is the one and only atonement for that sinfulness and those sins; that in Him there is pardon and salvation for us and for all men.
It is a day for renouncing one by one the sins of our lives past, our pride, our coldness and hardness of heart, our rash and idle words, our filial impiety, our anger and malice, our impurity, our dishonesty, our untruthfulness, our covetousness and for praying that in our poor measure we may be enabled ever hereafter to walk in the blessed steps of the most holy life of Him who was truth, and patience, and tenderness, and spotless purity, who was silent before His accusers, who did humble Himself even to the death upon the cross, and even when dying could be mindful of the needs of his mother.
It is also indeed a day when, if we have eyes that can weep, hearts that can feel, bosoms that can swell with pity and compassion for the woes and sufferings of a fellow-man, ours should be the bitterness and fullness of grief and the tenderness of sympathy for Him who, as on this day by His bitter passion and death upon the cross, redeemed us from the everlasting bitterness of eternal death. It is a day when we should heed the call which we are so soon to hear made to us, as it were, by the Mother of our Lord:
“O come and mourn with me awhile;
O come ye to the Saviour’s side;
O come, together let us mourn;
Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.”
It is, too, Indeed a Day We Should…
…pour forth the fullness of or love and gratitude, as never on another day, to Him who lived us and gave Himself for us. But it is a day for something more than penitence, and pity, and love. It is a day for the lowliest adoration, for the highest worship. If it be, indeed, God that hangs upon the cross, God that is dying for us, what utmost homage is there that is meet enough for us to offer to him? Surely it is the day when as never on another the words should go up from our lips and from our hearts: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto the Lamb forever and ever.” Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. “Crucified! we Thee adore!”
“To Christ, who won for sinners grace,
By bitter grief and anguish sore,
Be praise from all the ransomed race,
Forever and for evermore.”
Let us fail not then, that in our private hallowing and observance of this day, there be indeed paid unto Christ our God such homage, such adoration, such worship, as on scarcely another. Throughout all the year, brethren, there are no such hours, hours so memorable, so solemn, so sacred, so awful–hours in which every heart should be so full of love and sorrow and sympathy and devoutest thankfulness–in which sin should seem so utterly horrible and detestable, and the divine compassion and mercy so infinite and wonderful–hours which we should so desire entirely to give up and to consecrate to our only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ–as the three ensuing hours, the hours from twelve until three of this day. For, consider, they are the hours in which the work of our redemption, and the redemption of all mankind, by that only Lord and Saviour,
Jesus Christ, was accomplished. They are the hours in which the otherwise irremediable ruin wrought by the sin of our first parents for themselves and for all our race, was by the Second Adam, our only Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, forever retrieved–and the way opened for us and for all our race by Him into a Paradise, which, if gained, as it might be, should never be forfeited, and in which the joys ten thousand fold of that first Eden should be forever found; but the hours in which that ruin was retrieved and that way was opened, as only they could be, by such awful and unmitigated torments of the body and soul of that, only Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, as in all the universe and throughout all eternity, was never hitherto known and experienced, nor ever shall be here after.
They are the hours in which, after that night of agony and betrayal and desertion, and that morning of scoffing and spitting and scourging and smiting with the reed and crowning with the thorns, and dragging, as if He had been the very felon of the earth, from the one end of Jerusalem to the other, and of false accusal and unjust condemnation, and bearing of the cross up the steep of Calvary until he fell beneath its weight, that He hung upon it, between Heaven and Earth, supported by the nails driven through His hands and His feet, with the thorns lacerating His head at every uneasy turning for a moment’s relief–a spectacle to men and to angels. And they are the hours, when, with the scorching rays of the midday sun of that burning Eastern sky beating down upon his bare, bleeding, broken, crucified body–dying amid the sneers and deridings of the hostile multitude, and with a thief on either side, there was laid upon Him the intolerable burden of the iniquity of us all, the weight of every sin that had been committed or that should be committed by any one of our race–when He experienced in His own person on the tree the concentration of the punishment forever due to the sins of the whole world, and made an all sufficient and everlasting atonement for them–when the face of the Father was hidden from Him, and all the fiendish malevolence of all the powers of darkness, without let or hindrance, exercised itself upon Him.
We Have Come Together…
…to employ [these hours] as best we can–to try to devote them, to give them entirely up, to the crucified–in them to offer unto Him our adoring love and gratitude: as we kneel at the foot of His cross to consecrate ourselves, body, soul, and spirit, all that we have and all that we are, anew unto Him and unto His service–to ask Him to take us, and to make us and to keep us, poor, wretched, utterly unworthy as we are, His wholly and forever, and to help us each day of our life hereafter to do something that shall testify to the sincerity of the love that we bear to Him, and to the sense that we have of our infinite and everlasting indebtedness to Him.
Blessed Jesus, as we behold Thee being nailed to the cross, and listen to Thy words, we pray Thee that we may evermore be unselfish, mindful of others in all our trials and afflictions, be they never so severe; ever ready to forgive and to seek forgiveness; and ever guided and governed by the Holy Spirit in striving to speak and to do only that which is right, and the influence of which may be for the good of others.
Merciful and adorable Jesus, Thou who when dying didst promise Paradise to the dying, penitent thief, kneeling at the foot of Thy cross this day, we ask Thee to look upon us just as we are; there is no sin that we would keep back from Thee, for we desire that all may this day be forgiven, and we desire that we may be willing here after to suffer and to have our faith tried even as Thou wilt; if so be we may at the last be with Thee in Paradise, it matters not through what we pass in going thither.
There is probably no such intolerable craving as that of thirst. It is related that Alexander the Great, once making a long journey with his army through the deserts, after long drought and thirst, came to a certain river; and the soldiers began to drink the water with such eagerness that many choked themselves and died on the spot–the number that so perished being far greater than was lost in any war. The burning thirst was so intolerable that the soldiers could not restrain themselves, that they might breathe a little between drinking (Bellarmine). There is nothing that so aggravates thirst, intolerable as it might be from a mere protracted want of water, as loss of blood, and exhaustion from fatigue. It is told of one of the martyrs that, when bound to the stake and receiving many wounds, he complained only of thirst; and of another person, stricken by many wounds from which the blood flowed profusely, that he longed for nothing but drink, as if he suffered no harm but the most burning thirst.
In the agony of the preceding night our Lord’s blood had been forced from His veins, and had fallen in great drops to the ground. In that pitiless scourging and crowning with thorns in this early morning, how must He again have been bathed in His gore. From those more and more distending wounds in His hands, and from the hole which the cruel nail had torn through His feet, for three weary hours the blood had been welling. And then let us think how utterly worn and weary the dear Lord of us all must have been when He came to the cross. He had tasted neither food nor drink since the supper of the night before, nor had He slept since we know not when. He had been rudely dragged and hustled along, jeered and mocked by the way, from the garden to the house of Annas, from the house of Annas to that of Caiaphas, from the house of Caiaphas to the Judgment Hall of Pilate, from the Judgment Hall to the Palace of Herod, from the Palace back again to Pilate–and then scourged and crowned with thorns, and tottering under the weight of the heavy cross, He had been urged to go faster and faster up the steep of Calvary until He stumbled and fell. Surely, surely, when He said “I thirst,” there must have been a significance in the words, which they scarcely ever had when spoken by another; and throat, and tongue, and mouth, and lips must have been parched as those of scarcely ever another.
Shall We Not Learn a Lesson?
And, dear brethren, shall we not learn a lesson in Christian fortitude as we think of this, and as we hear these words from the cross to-day? Some thing at least to shame us out of our constant complaining and impatience? Does a single day of our life go and the things the most trivial, a want ungratified at the moment of its arising, a temporary discomfort, a pain not worthy a thought, even the vicissitudes of sky and temperature, not provoke our impatience and complaining? And yet it is in the daily routine of trivial matters that we are to show our likeness unto Christ. Our payer book tells us that there should be no greater comfort to Christian persons than to be made like unto Christ, by suffering patiently adversities, troubles, and sicknesses. If then our lives be too much lives of complaining and querulousness–making much of little–from this day forth let them be so no more. Let us be brave, enduring, reticent, in some poor measure like to our Master.
Amen
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