The Man with the Bag
He did not come empty-handed. He carried a bag with him when he paid us a visit. Its handle was in his hand. In the bag was his love for us. Instead of welcoming him, perversely, we tried to bring humanity to ruin. We did everything in our power to loosen his grip on the bag. We tried our damdest to make him let go of it. We tortured and killed him. We impaled him on a cross like a worm on a hook while he was human, alive, tender, vulnerable, and our guest upon the earth. Like grist, we ground him up in the mill. Like a piñata, we hung him from a tree and beat him with sticks until he was dead. We baptized him in a boiling cauldron of torture and death .
He suffered and died. Yet, despite the evil we did to him, he emerged from the dead with the bag still in his hand. The evil we did to him had no effect whatsoever on his grip on the bag. He clung to it, held tight and refused to let go. He clung to his love for us with the iron grip of the drowning man who clings to a life preserver when he is tossed overboard into the stormy sea after his ship is sunk. Does his refusal to let go not tell us something about the man with the bag - about the extraordinary intransigence of his love for us? Is not his intransigent love for us a rock
? Is not his intransigent love for us the rock on which the wise build their house ?
Why didn't the evil we did to him piss him off?
Why didn't the evil we did put us on his shit list?
Why didn't the bomb explode after its fuse was lit?
Why didn't the evil we did to him disqualify us as beneficiaries of his gifts - make us ineligible?
Why didn't the evil we did to him incite him to rip into shreds the love note that the most Holy Trinity sent to us at Bethlehem?
Why didn't the evil we did to him incite him to revoke the invitation to return to our home with him and his holy family in paradise?
Why didn't the evil we did to him shatter into bits and pieces any resemblance that he bore to God?
Why didn't the evil we did to him transmogrify him into the most miserable and hideous of loveless beasts?
Why didn't the evil we did to him poke a hole into his most sacred heart and emptied it of his love for us?
Why didn't the evil we did to him extinguish the bonfire of love that burns for us in his most sacred heart?
Why didn't the evil we did to him trap him in the blackhole of death?
Why didn't the evil we did to him sever the connection between our repentance for sins and his forgiveness - it ought to have made sin more powerful than repentance - it ought to have made repentance impossible.
His reaction to the evil we did to him was, by our standards, illogical - counterintuitive - surprising - unexpected - kind. What ought to have happened did not.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
We lit the fuse. But the bomb did not explode. It was a dud.
The evil we did to him besieged his love for us. Yet, he never surrendered it to our evil. He resisted the siege. He clung to his love for us, held tight and refused to let go. He clung to his love for us with the iron grip of the drowning man who clings to a life preserver when tossed overboard into the stormy sea after his ship is sunk.
To show us the magnitude of his love for us, he paid the extravagant cost for the production of the Crucifixion out of his own pocket. He paid the cost not from his unlimited divine resources. He paid the cost from his limited human resources. He paid them all for us. He kept not a penny for himself. He has never paid more for anything else !