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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
ONE
In this time before the
Sacred Liturgy of Good Friday I am going to offer meditations on The Last Seven
Words of Jesus from the Cross.
A hymn captures well what
is at the heart of this Devotion.
Seven times He spoke, Seven Words of
Love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.
Frederick
William Faber (1814–1863)
The First Word: ‘Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.’
Two others also, who were
criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the
place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals,
one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do. (Luke 23.32-34)
Do you have the capacity to
forgive? Do you know yourself to be forgiven? And if you do what does that look
like in your life?
Jesus, true God and true
Man, reveals to us the depths of divine forgiveness and also the call and
capacity, to us frail human beings, the need to forgive.
Throughout his earthly
ministry Jesus is forgiveness personified.
He teaches us to pray,
‘forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’.
He declares forgiveness to
those whose lives are marred and disfigured by sinfulness.
The forgiveness he offers
is scandalous to the religious authorities, for they reason that only God can
forgive sins.
And of course, they are
quite right.
Only God can forgive sins,
so it is entirely proper that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, forgives sins.
Yet they, like the culture
of today, cannot see him, and until they see models of forgiveness in the
people marked with the sign of the Cross, will not come to know ‘Jesus, our
Love, is crucified’.
People in our culture
flounder around not knowing what they are doing.
Demands for apologies,
indignant finger pointing at the frailties of others, shaming and blaming:
forgiveness is far from our increasingly de-Christianised culture today.
That just cannot be for
someone marked by the sign of the cross
St Peter tried to get his
head around this, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how
often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven
times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.’ (Matthew 18.22-24).
If you want to see what
forgiveness unbounded looks like; look to the cross of Jesus Christ.
This forgiveness inspires others
to do the same, those who recognise that forgiveness is ultimately the
courageous path.
Christianity
preaches a high ideal of forgiveness; we are familiar with it. Yet to see it
put into practice is always astonishing.
As St Stephen, the first Christian
martyr, is being bludgeoned to death by rocks, He gazes into heaven and sees
the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. It is from this
vision of humanity at one with God in the risen and ascended Lord that Stephen
cries first, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’ – echoing the seventh word from
the Cross - and then Stephen fell to his knees and declared ‘Lord, do not hold
this against them’. It is a declaration of forgiveness.
Diane
Foley has spoken of forgiving the murderers of her son James, who
was a war correspondent in Syria in 2014. From their faith the Foley family decided
not to give into bitterness and to extend a hand of forgiveness.
Mrs Foley met one of Jim’s captors in 2022, and afterwards said: ‘If I
hate them, they have won. They will continue to hold me captive because I am
not willing to be different to the way they were to my loved one. We have to
pray for the courage to be the opposite.’
Let
us pray.
In
the Crucified One we see forgiveness unbounded, Father forgive us in our
floundering and give us the capacity and courage to forgive those who sin
against us.
The
Cross is my sure salvation.
The
Cross I ever adore.
The
Cross of my Lord is with me.
The
Cross is my refuge.
Amen.
TWO
Seven times He spoke, Seven Words of
Love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.
Frederick
William Faber (1814–1863)
The Second Word: ‘This day
you shall be with me in paradise (Luke 23.43).’
One of the criminals who were
hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save
yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God,
since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been
condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this
man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come
into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘This
day you shall be with me in Paradise.’
In our Creed we proclaim
that we believe in the life of the world to come.
In this second word from
the Cross we see a remarkable thing; a criminal is assured not only that there
is paradise, heaven, the place of eternal comfort and bliss, but that in that
moment of pleading Jesus grants the criminal entry into his kingdom.
So we can say, with
confidence, that we believe in the life of the world to come.
In another place in the
gospels the disciples (Matthew 20.17-28), James and John, who believe the promise of heaven, and drawing in their mother to bat
on their behalf, have begun working on a seating plan.
They place themselves on
the top table.
Did they never hear the
parable that speaks of entering the wedding banquet – an image of the kingdom
and of Paradise – and sitting at the lowliest place so that one might be
summonsed forward, hearing the beautiful words, ‘Friend, come up higher’? (Luke
14.10-11)
Instead we see someone who
has no place in the world’s eyes, a crucified criminal, hanging next to Jesus
who repents of his sins, and utters words that should be on our lips moment by
moment, shaping our souls, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your
kingdom’.
Turning to the Crucified
One in penitence and humility is the entry point into the kingdom that is his,
the entry point to Paradise.
In this agonisingly
beautiful encounter, Christ the New Adam, is restoring fallen humanity to the
Garden of Eden, Paradise itself.
Man’s arrogance and
grasping at equality with God, wanting to be on top table with God, eating of
the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, saw Adam and Eve driven out of
Paradise (Genesis 3.24).
The naïve ambition of many
today is seek Paradise without God, thinking that this form of government, that
form of strategy, this ideology will solve our problems.
This second word tells us
that the entry point to the kingdom is through penitence, humility and reliance
on the Crucified One, ‘Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom’.
Then as those crucified with Christ we will hear his words, This day you shall
be with me in Paradise’.
Let us pray.
In the Crucified One, we
behold the man who came to serve not to be served and to give his life a ransom
for many. Father, may we hear your Son’s call to life in Paradise in all its
abundance. Amen.
The
Cross is my sure salvation.
The
Cross I ever adore.
The
Cross of my Lord is with me.
The
Cross is my refuge.
Amen.
.
THREE
Seven times He spoke, Seven Words of
Love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.
Frederick
William Faber (1814–1863)
The Third Word: ‘Behold
your Son; behold your mother’ (John 19.26, 27)
Meanwhile, standing near
the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of
Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he
loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’
‘Behold, your son; behold
your mother.’ These words entrust one person, Mary, to another, John, the
Beloved Disciple, they form a new relationship.
Man was never intended to
be solitary. We are not closed off automatons, buffered from our fellow men and
women, we are created for relationship and intimacy, irrespective of our
condition of life .
From the moment Adam saw
the helpmeet God had provided in the woman Eve, this interdependency of human
relationships is revealed and patterned on our lives.
The human child is utterly
at one with her mother in the womb, bound by the life-giving umbilical cord, as
Christ was to his Mother, Mary.
Similarly the dependence
the child has on its parents. This is reflected in words from the prophecy of
Hosea:
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.
Hosea 11.1,3-4
Marriage is the sacrament sees
the coming together of a man and a woman, and signifies something deeper. Marriage
takes them beyond friendship to become one flesh signifying both the relational
character of being human and, more deeply, the mystery of the marriage of the
Church, the Bride, to Christ, the Bridegroom.
Christ comes to restore not
the umbilical cord to our earthly mother but to our Heavenly Father.
Christ comes to hold our
hand as companion and friend, Lord and Saviour, to lead us through the valley
of the shadow of death.
Christ comes as the
Bridegroom calling his Bride the church, to be consummated at the fulfilment of
all things, as described by the Revelation to John:
‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new
earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea
was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of
heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.’
Revelation
21.1,2
Jesus’ Third Word from the
Cross institutes that Divine Mystery of the Church, his Body. ‘And from that
hour the disciple took Christ’s Blessed Mother into his own home.
In this Third Word
relationship is restored, we enter with Mary and the disciple into the
unfolding drama of God where we find our own preferences and egos are subdued
and put to death on his Cross.
There is nothing more
intimate than the Divine-Human nature of Christ, through our membership of the
Church, nourished by the Sacraments we grow into the perfect union of love that
he calls us to.
In the Crucified One, true
God and true Man, we see the unity of all things. Father, may we know always
our dependence on your Son in the company of all the saints. Amen.
The
Cross is my sure salvation.
The
Cross I ever adore.
The
Cross of my Lord is with me.
The
Cross is my refuge.
Amen.
FOUR
Seven times He spoke, Seven Words of
Love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.
Frederick
William Faber (1814–1863)
Our fourth word: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
(Matthew 27.46)
From noon on, darkness came
over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus
cried with a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
(Matthew 27.45,46)
Of all the books of the Old
Testament the one most frequently on Jesus’ lips is the Psalms. Jesus’ cry from
the cross is one such example.
This psalm, Psalm 22,
articulates the depths of Jesus’ pain and the abandonment he feels on the
cross.
The cry of Jesus is not an
emotional outburst, but quoting the psalm he is both speaking of the agony he
is undergoing for the sake of the world, but also his enduring trust in his
heavenly Father, the God of Israel.
His word, ‘My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?’, which the gospel writers retain in the original
Aramaic, as do the translators, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ is the opening
verse of Psalm 22.
That Psalm narrates the
experience of abandonment and, at the same time, enduring hope. By quoting the
first verse of the psalm Jesus points us to the whole text, which would be
typical of the method of the Rabbis of his day.
Despite the deep sense of
forsakenness – ‘O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not : and in
the night-season also I take no rest’ (v2) – still the psalmist acknowledges
the majesty of God: ‘and thou continuest holy: O thou worship of Israel.’ (v3)
The psalm reflects on the
way in which past generations have trusted in God and not been confounded. Yet
it turns inward, as the psalmist reflects on his own inadequacy in the face
other people who laugh scornfully and mock. Here we see Jesus the victim of the
baying crowd, the man hanging isolated on the cross.
The mocking pass him
saying, ‘He trusted in God, that he would deliver him : let him deliver him, if
he will have him.’ (v8) Those words of the psalm sound from the foot of the
cross as bystanders mock and ridicule Christ.
In the face of abandonment
the human spirit moves to introspection, and the psalmist does that.
What can possibly be going
through the mind of an innocent man: naked, broken, disfigured, alone and
fighting for breath and his lungs fill with fluid? The psalm puts it like this:
I am poured out like water, and all my
bones are out of joint : my heart also in the midst of my body is even like
melting wax.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue cleaveth to my gums : and thou shalt bring me into the dust of
death. (vs 14 & 15)
The psalm even describes
what we understand to be crucifixion: ‘They pierced my hands and my feet; I may
tell all my bones : they stand staring and looking upon me’. (v17)
Yet, and yet, comes a plea
for deliverance, a plea rooted in the deep and enduring confidence that God is
near at hand, and that to cry out to God even from the very depths will be
heard: ‘[God] hath not hid his face from [me], but when [I] called unto him he
heard [me].’ (v24b)
A psalm that begins in
forsakenness ends in praise and assurance. This is the way of the Cross, the
way of Christ. Through the cross our sense of abandonment and desolation can
never be the end of the story when we cry out to God in faith.
Let us pray:
Lord, in times of
desolation you are present with us. Father, may we draw on your strength and
comfort in the midst of adversity and know the consolation of your loving
presence.
Amen.
The
Cross is my sure salvation.
The
Cross I ever adore.
The
Cross of my Lord is with me.
The
Cross is my refuge.
Amen.
FIVE
Seven times He spoke, Seven Words of
Love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.
Frederick
William Faber (1814–1863)
The Fifth Word: I thirst (John 19.28)
After this, when Jesus knew
that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), ‘I thirst.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put
a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth.
‘I thirst’ reveals the
divine-human nature of the Crucified One.
It is a statement of
physical need and of spiritual pleading.
Jesus’ cry echoes the cry
universal to all human beings.
Our first cry in this life
is ‘I thirst’ as a the cry to our mother, as we seek to feed at the maternal
breast’.
Aching spiritual thirst is
articulated beautifully in the Psalms:
LIKE as the hart desireth the
water-brooks : so longeth my soul after
thee, O God.
My soul is athirst for God, yea, even
for the living God : when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
Psalm 42.1,2
O GOD, thou art my God : early will I
seek thee.
My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh
also longeth after thee : in a barren and dry land where no water is.
Psalm 63.1,2
The heart of our faith and
the testimony of the Gospels tells us that our thirst is quenched in Jesus
Christ.
This is at the heart of the
encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. As he speaks to her, he is
speaking into a thirsty world:
‘Everyone who drinks of this water will
be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will
never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of
water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this
water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw
water.’
John
4.13-15
That woman, and we, drink
from deep sources as we entrust our lives to Christ, and with her we find the
words of the Prophet Isaiah are true, ‘with joy you will draw water from the
wells of salvation’ (Isaiah 12.1).
This cry of thirst on the
cross is a pained cry.
Jesus is surely both
thirsting for refreshment – he is dying through a uniquely draining tortuous
execution – and thirsting for the salvation of the world, that is being
effected in his Body.
This is a great mystery of
our faith: as True God he pours out life-giving water; as True Man he thirsts.
On the last day of the festival, the
great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, ‘Let anyone who is
thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture
has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” ’
John
7.37, 38
Let us pray.
In the Crucified One we see
the wellspring of salvation. Father, may we drink deeply of Christ’s love that
from the temple of our hearts may flow rivers of living water. Amen.
The
Cross is my sure salvation.
The
Cross I ever adore.
The
Cross of my Lord is with me.
The
Cross is my refuge.
Amen.
SIX
Seven times He spoke, Seven Words of
Love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.
Frederick
William Faber (1814–1863)
The Sixth Word: It is finished (John 19.30)
When Jesus had received the
wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up
his spirit.
All is now accomplished, completed,,
finished. The Latin text of this word is ‘consummatus est’, it is consummated.
The word consummation is
both a coming together and a beginning, and that helps us understand that when
Jesus says ‘it is finished’ he is not saying ‘my project to change the world is
finished and in the dustbin’, he is not saying, ‘I’m finished with those human
beings, look what they’ve done to me’.
Rather, this is the moment
of completion, of fulfilment, of accomplishment
The consummation is the
uniting of heaven and earth on the pivot of the Cross. Christ the Bridegroom
has consummated his relationship with humanity through his life-giving death on
the Cross.
In John’s Gospel Jesus
speaks often of his ‘hour. Not yet, not yet, but now.
Hanging between heaven and
earth this is the completion hour.
Now he will drink the wine
of the kingdom from the cup that comes to him.
And as he drinks his own
lifeblood pours out of his head, his hands, his feet, and with water, from his
side.
The redeeming, saving work
on earth is finished, and now his Church is entrusted to proclaim and live out
that task in his name, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the
Father.
The Letter to the Hebrews states
that, ‘[God’s] works were finished at the foundation of the world’ (Hebrews 4.3).
What was completed at the Creation is consummated in the world through the
saving death. The Revelation to John testifies that the Lamb of God, Jesus
Christ, was slain from the foundation of the world’.
This sacrifice we see now, on
the Cross of which Hebrews says again:
Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by
human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself,
now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself
again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with
blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again
since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all
at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Hebrews
9.23-26
On the Cross the perfect
sacrifice for sin is offered. What was lain down since the foundation of the
world is consummated in his offering, ‘It is finished’.
The
Cross is my sure salvation.
The
Cross I ever adore.
The
Cross of my Lord is with me.
The
Cross is my refuge.
Amen.
SEVEN
Seven times He spoke, Seven Words of
Love;
And all three hours His silence cried
For mercy on the souls of men;
Jesus, our Love, is crucified.
Frederick
William Faber (1814–1863)
The Seventh Word: ‘Father, into
your hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke 23.46)
‘It was now about noon, and
darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s
light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying
with a loud voice, said, ‘Father,
into your hands I commend my spirit.’
Having said this, he breathed his last.’ (Luke 23.44-46)
The Creation narrative of
Genesis completes each day of creation with the words, ‘and the was evening and
there was morning… the first/second/third day, up to the sixth.
Jesus commends his spirit.
A ‘commendation’ according
to the dictionary can mean the giving of formal or official praise:
‘the film deserved the
highest commendation’; or it can be ‘an award given for very good performance’:
‘the soldiers received
commendations for bravery’; or a commendation might be ‘a very good result in
an examination or competition’.
But the commendation of
Jesus’ spirit is not about a great performance, or heroic bravery – though he
displays fortitude – and it is not about a commendation that is a good result.
When Jesus commends his
spirit, it is an act of oblation, it is an offering. The life breath breathed
into the nostrils of the first Adam by God, is breathed out by the New Adam who
is himself God.
As Jesus Christ commends
his spirit, that life breath and who he is, back to the Father he is announcing
the coming Sabbath of his death, when his body will lie in the stillness of the
tomb.
The writhing agony of
crucifixion will be given over to the silent, limp, bloodied body that will be
taken down from the cross.
At the Office of Compline,
the last point of prayer in the day we sing ‘into your hands, O Lord, I commend
my spirit’. And there was evening…
Then comes the promise of
the morning: ‘For you have redeemed me, Lord God of truth.’
In the commendation of
Jesus spirit to the Father, we are caught in the eternal pattern of death and
birth, mortality, which we generally think of as birth and death, in that
order. Yet as St Francis of Assisi notes, ‘it is in dying that we are born to
eternal life’.
To commend one’s spirit to
the Father, with Jesus, is to acknowledge that death is the gateway to life
everlasting; that when I die to myself and all the masks I wear, the illusions
I live by, the manipulations and self-deception I am prone to, then and only
then will I wake to a yet more glorious day.
That is when I might make
the words of the Lamentations of Jeremiah my own:
The steadfast love of the Lord never
ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘therefore I will hope in him.’
Lamentations
3.22-24
Let us pray:
Lord, you commend your
spirit to the Father, and we pray that through the power of the Cross we might
die to self to life to your glory.
Amen.
The
Cross is my sure salvation.
The
Cross I ever adore.
The
Cross of my Lord is with me.
The
Cross is my refuge.
Amen.
A reading from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a
Kempis.
Renounce self, take up your cross,
follow Jesus.[1]
These words seem very hard, yet it will
be much harder to hear those final words - go
far from me, you that are a cursed, into that eternal fire.[2]
The people who now gladly here and obey the words which bring them across will
have no fear then of the words that mean eternal condemnation. When the Lord
comes to judge, it will be the sign of the cross that is in the heaven. Then
all the servants of the cross who win this life followed in the steps of the
crucified Jesus will come before Christ the Judge with confidence and boldness.
So why are you afraid to take up the
cross, when it leads us to the kingdom?
In the cross is salvation, in the cross
is life; in the cross is defence from enemies, in the cross heaven’s sweetness
is outpoured; in the cross is strength of mind, in the cross is joy of spirit;
in the cross is highest virtue, in the cross is perfect holiness. There is no
salvation for the soul no hope of eternal life except in the cross. Take up
your cross then, and follow Jesus, and you will enter eternal life. He went
before you, carrying his cross, and on the cross he died for you, so that you too
should carry your cross, and long for a death on the cross. For if you share
his death, you will also share his life.[3]
If you are with him in his suffering, you will be with him in his glory.
All that matters is the cross and dying
on the cross – there is no other way to life in real inward peace except the
way of the Holy Cross, and of daily dying to sell. Go where you like, look for
what you like, you will not find a higher way above or a safer way below in the
way of the Holy Cross.
Even if you arrange everything to suit
your own views and wishes you will always find that you still have to suffer
something, whether you want to or not - the cross will always be there. If you
do not suffer physical pain, you will have inward trials of the spirit:
sometimes God will abandon you, sometimes your neighbour give you something to
bear, and worse still, you will often be a burden to yourself. No remedy or
comfort will be able to deliver or relieve you, but you will have to bear it as
long God wills it so. For it is God’s will for you to learn to endure troubles
without receiving comfort, so that you will submit entirely to him, and from
this trouble learn humility. No one feels the passion of Christ in his heart as
much as the man whose lot it is to suffer as he did.
So the cross is always close by and
waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it, wherever you may run; for
everywhere you go you take yourself, and always you will find yourself. Look up
or down, out or in, there too you will find the cross; and all the time you
must go on being patient if you wish to have inward peace and to win a crown
that will last forever.
Homily
The Passion Gospel lays
bare before us the depths of the love of God in Christ and the extent he will
go to for us. Shortly we will be invited to come forward to venerate the Cross
of Christ. You may wish to touch, to kiss or simply bow your head in adoration
and wonder.
As you do so, consider the
love that God has for you, the words from the cross that speak to your heart.
In the time of preaching
the Cross and meditation prior to this Liturgy, our focus was the Seven Last
Words of Jesus from the Cross.
The words that Christ gave
from the cross are powerful and moving and invite deep reflection.
St Teresa of Calcutta
reflected on Jesus’ word, ‘I thirst’ and she wrote , ‘I thirst for you’ which I
will read now. In this words she imagines Christ speaking directly to her soul,
your soul and mine: may they take root in your heart and bring them to the foot
of the Cross today.
I
THIRST FOR YOU.
It is true. I stand at the
door of your heart, day and night. Even when you are not listening, even when
you doubt it could be Me, I am there: waiting for even the smallest signal of
your response, even the smallest suggestion of an invitation that will permit
Me to enter.
I want you to know that
each time you invite Me, I do come always, without fail. Silent and invisible I
come, yet with a power and a love most infinite, bringing the many gifts of My
Spirit. I come with My mercy, with My desire to forgive and heal you, with a
love for you that goes beyond your comprehension.
A love in each detail, so
grand like the love I have received from My Father “I have loved all of you as
the Father has loved me…” John 15:10
I come longing to console
you and give you strength, to lift you up and bind all your wounds. I bring you
My light, to dispel your darkness and all your doubts. I come with My power,
that allows me to carry you:
with My grace, to touch
your heart and transform your life. I come with My peace, to calm your soul.
I know you like the palm of
my hand. I know everything about you. Even the hairs of your head I have
counted. Nothing in your life is unimportant to Me. I have followed you through
the years and I have always loved you even when you have strayed. I know every
one of your problems. I know your needs and your worries and yes, I know all your sins.
But I tell you again that I
love you, not for what you have or ceased to do, I love you for you, for the
beauty and the dignity My Father gave you by creating you in His own image. It
is a dignity you have often forgotten, a beauty you have tarnished by sin. But
I love you as you are, and I have shed My Blood to rescue you. If you only ask
Me with faith, My grace will touch all that needs changing in your life: I will
give you the strength to free yourself from sin and from all its destructive
power.
I know what is in your
heart, I know your loneliness and all your wounds, the rejections, the
judgments, the humiliations, I carried it all before you. And I carried it all
for you, so you could share My strength and My victory. I know, above all, your
need for love, how much you are thirsting for love and tenderness. Yet, how many times have you desired to
satisfy your thirst in vain, seeking that love with selfishness, trying to fill
the void within you with passing pleasures, with the even greater emptiness of
sin.
Do you thirst for love?
“Come to Me all you who
thirst … ” (John 7:37).I will satisfy you and fill you.
Do you thirst to be loved?
I love you more than you
can imagine … to the point of dying on a cross for you.
I THIRST FOR YOU. Yes, that
is the only way to even begin to describe My love for you.
I THIRST FOR YOU. I thirst
to love you and to be loved by you. So precious are you to Me that I THIRST FOR
YOU. Come to Me, and I will fill your
heart and heal your wounds. I will make you a new creation and give you peace
even in your trials.
I THIRST FOR YOU. You must
never doubt My mercy, My desire to forgive, My longing to bless you and live My
life in you, and that I accept you no matter what you have done.
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