Eleventh Station: Jesus Is Nailed To The Cross Series

The Eleventh Station: Jesus Nailed to the Cross

(Those of us who have had the privilege and honor of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land always make Jerusalem part of the holy time. There, although the Jewish Temple has been replaced by a grand mosque, we can see the very places we read about in the New Testament, the actions of our redemption through the life, passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many make the way of the cross, the Via Dolorosa, an ancient prayer service with stops at places that commemorate events of Our Lord’s tortuous journey to the place of His execution. Some of the stations, as they are called, are taken directly from the Gospels, some are inferred from the practice of crucifixion, and a few come from the more reliable Christian traditions.)

In the movie, The Passion of the Christ, the director used His own hand to hold one of the nails that was pounded into the flesh of the crucified. That should say something to all of us sinners. Who killed Christ? Who drove the nails and wielded the lash and braided the crown of thorns? I did. You did. Our deliberate sins against God and against neighbor, our gossip and lies, our adultery and actions against human life, our little and big thefts and our abuse of the divine name were all nailed through the flesh of Jesus. Moreover, Jesus accepted them.

Oh, there was no pleasure involved. Jesus sweated blood in the Garden because He knew crucifixion. When the Romans killed a slave or murderer or insurrectionist by crucifying him or her, they made the whole town come out and watch. They left the crucified with a guard sometimes for days until they expired. The physical pain was impossible not to anticipate.

But the emotional and spiritual pain, we know, were worse. Jesus, Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Son of God and son of Mary was the very Word of God responsible for creating and sustaining the people who were torturing Him, reviling Him. In the garden He foresaw it all, and even begged the Father to take that bitter cup away from Him. But it was not possible because human redemption and Resurrection were not possible without His suffering and death. He had to pour Himself out all the way, losing all dignity, all pleasure, all His blood so that His death would be the source of our life, our eternal life. That’s how much He loved us. That’s why He willingly felt Himself being torn limb from limb as He was lifted up. He had told us that being lifted up, He would draw all of us to Himself.

As He was affixed to the scaffold, He uttered a prayer that would over the centuries burn itself into the memories of billions who heard them. He who taught His disciples to forgive their debtors, their abusers asked His Father to “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Forgive the soldiers, for they thought Christ was an insurrectionist, a pretend king of the Jews. Forgive the scribes and Pharisees and priests in the onlooking crowd, because they knew He claimed to be and really was their Messiah, but they thought that would threaten their leadership and wealth. Forgive you and me, because every sin we commit is done for what we think is a “good reason,” and we really are that stupid.

So Jesus was lifted up. His execution was really a sacrifice because it was intimately tied to the Eucharistic Passover celebrated the day before, when He prophesied over the bread and wine to His disciples. The chief priests, whose underlings were at that hour sacrificing hundreds of lambs for Passover in the Temple precinct, did not realize that their plot was killing the true Passover Lamb right before their eyes. We are challenged today to enter more fully that mystery, and to pick up our own cross and follow Jesus, repenting of our sins and accepting whatever God’s will for us may be.