As we enter the month of April, we discover ourselves in the middle of Lent and moving quickly toward Holy Week and Easter. This month of April is guaranteed to be a time of intense spiritual growth if we take the time to simply focus on what God wants to say to us through the liturgies we celebrate. Sometimes, it can be helpful for us to look at the mysteries we celebrate from another perspective and thus I would like to dedicate this month’s Spiritual Ponderings on a little known Catholic devotion. This devotion focuses on paying special attention to the Last Seven Words of Christ as He hung upon the Cross. In his book the Life of Christ, Archbishop Fulton Sheen beautifully described Jesus being nailed to the Cross as a preacher ascending the pulpit in order to preach to the world: “In this sublime hour He called all His children to the pulpit of the Cross, and every word He said to them was set down for the purpose of an eternal publication and an undying consolation. There was never a preacher like the dying Christ; there was never a congregation like that which gathered about the pulpit of the Cross.”

As we gather around the pulpit of the Cross to listen to Our Lord speak let us notice a couple of things about this special pulpit and the people that Jesus is choosing to speak to. The first thing we should notice is that we are on a mountain. Throughout the Scriptures, Mountains were always special places where God would encounter an individual or a group of people. We see that it is on top of a Mountain that God speaks to Moses through the Burning Bush and will eventually give Moses the Ten Commandments. Elijah hid himself in a crack within a mountain when Elijah saw the Lord pass by in the whisper. The city of Jerusalem with the temple was in fact build upon a mountain. Mountains being a special place of encounter between God and His people continued in Jesus’ life. We see Jesus climb the Mountain of Beatitude in order to give us the Sermon on the Mount, then in the middle of the Gospel Jesus goes up a mountain in order to be transfigured in front of Peter, James, and John and finally Jesus has climbed a third mountain Calvary in order to allow God and man to have the ultimate encounter.

The second thing we should notice is that our Lord even with all the pain He is going through has remained calm, cool, and collective. Any words that come out of the Lord’s mouth have meaning and purpose. At no time does He babble because of the pain and at no time does He contradict anything He taught. He is like a warrior on a mission. I know that if I was in his place, I would be a babbling idiot and I would be crying out in immense pain. So I have to ask myself, where does the Lord get His strength? How can Jesus keep His mind clear and eyes on the prize? The answer is simple. He is love and St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians that “love endures all things.” Our Lord is a heroic warrior fighting for his bride. There is no pain that He is not willing to endure in order to be with us.

1. Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do.—Luke 23:34
I am sure that none of the Roman soldiers expected Jesus’ first words from the cross to be words of forgiveness. Jesus truly practices what He preaches and forgives us unconditionally. For me this is the primary example of what it means to turn the other cheek. Jesus stands there and tells us to throw our worse at Him for there is nothing we can do that will stop Him from loving us. If you have ever been in an argument with someone who emotionally wound up and/or disturbed. You know that there is no reasoning with them. If so then you know that sometimes the only thing you can do is say do to me as you will but I will never stop loving you. The emotional person must use up all their negative energy before they are in a place to talk and this is what Jesus does. He takes our very worse (we killing Him) and turns it around and shows us that His love is stronger. He says it now and shows it again after the Resurrection in the upper room.

Jesus is able to forgive us because He realizes that we do not know what we are doing. When people hurt us we assume that they did it out of malice but the truth of the matter is that when people hurt us it is often more out of neglect. Even if they do hurt us intentionally it is often because they themselves are hurt in some way and do not know how to handle the current situation because of the pass hurt.

All the problems in the world come down to the fact that we all want to be loved but we think that we are unlovable. Jesus mounts the pulpit of the Cross to proclaim how lovable we really are. We are loved so much by God that He would rather die than be without us.