The Very Best Way

"Mommy?"

My very sad 7 year old sat down next to me as we returned home after Holy Thursday Mass. "Wasn't there some other way that Jesus could have saved us?  He was God.  Couldn't there have been another way?"

Another Way?

I had seen this little girl's tears at the end of Mass as the Eucharist was taken in slow procession from the Church and as the women reverently stripped the altar and removed the candles and left our tabernacle open and empty for all to see.  We were living that moment when Jesus had been taken from us, and it didn't sit well with little Leah (or me, either, to be honest).

Many worshipers had remained several moments in silence before quietly exiting or making their own sorrowful procession to the Altar of Repose that seemed to represent for us the imprisonment our Lord underwent before his death.  Our family had sat before this altar before we headed home, and I remembered how Leah's sweet little tears flowed quietly.

"Wasn't there another way?" she begged.

"Oh darling," I responded, too quickly for the words to have been my own. "He is God.  There may have been lots of ways to open the gates of Heaven, but He didn't just come to offer us salvation... He wanted us to receive it.  He chose the Cross to make us feel His love, and to draw out our love for Him.  He is God, Peanut.  So I think of all the possible ways, we can trust that He chose the very best way."

His Blood be on Us and on our Children

I'm reminded of the scripture verse from Romans 5:8: "God proves His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  To put this another way, He died for us while we were still enemies.

The crowds infamously responded to Pilate after he washed his hands "of this righteous man's blood" by saying, "His blood be on us and on our children" Matthew 27:25.  Their vitriol and hate in that moment was flung into His face and His response still shocks us...



"Yes," His love responded. "So be it."

As death was wrought and his heart was pierced, His blood did flow out and continues to flow even now over us and our children. Not as guilt or condemnation, but as an ocean of mercy that washes away all stain of sin and enmity.




You Can't Make Someone Love You

But why all this labor to win over our hearts to Him?

Jesus' parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), the story of that privileged one who wished death on his father to prematurely claim his inheritance, and found himself in dire poverty and misery, bears an explanation.

After reflecting on this parable a few weeks ago, I asked the children in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium, "The father must have heard about the famine. He must have been so worried for his son. Why didn't the father just go and get his son and bring him back?"

A 10 year old boy answered simply, "Because he didn't want a slave. He wanted his son. You can't make someone love you."

So the father watched and waited for the day that his son would come to his senses and remember the goodness of the father that he treated so poorly.  He waited for his son to love him. Yet that prodigal had no idea how deep his father's love was until his return - when this pitiful and contrite penitent begged enough forgiveness to be considered a slave and was instead overwhelmed with mercy and received again as a son.

The Very Best Way

It is the greatest mystery of love that God would choose to die at our hands so that we may know that "truly this is the Son of God." Oh that we would have the grace to suffer so well at the hands of our enemies so as to make them our friends!  It is the path that our Savior has blazed for us, and we ought to follow. He is God after all, and has shown us not only the way, but the very best way.