What was this All For?

Dear Friends: many of us know of someone who served in one of the wars. Almost everyone in those wars knew fallen comrades that never returned home. People often refer to those deaths as "The Supreme Sacrifice". In our churches they are often commemorated on honour rolls with the words of Jesus, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Veterans volunteered out of love for home & country and the willingness to ‘give their all’. They had loyalty to a just cause. Ultimately, they endangered themselves to protect their comrades-in-arms and truly did, ‘lay down their lives for their friends’. Can you imagine a veteran making that kind of sacrifice for people – or a nation – that had betrayed them, tortured them, and held them in hatred or contempt? That would be very hard to believe. How could anyone possibly lay down his or her life like that?

Well, St. Paul tells us in Romans 6: 8,9 about just such a person. "Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man - though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us!" That is the greatest wonder in the whole world. God knows the worst about us – those parts of ourselves that we keep hidden from others – and he still loves us!

God responds to the problem of evil not with mere words or pat answers, but by dealing with it, ‘in person’ – in the Word Made Flesh, his only Son, Jesus Christ. His ‘final answer’ to hatred and evil is his own untiring Love for every one of us. It truly is the Supreme Sacrifice. Each of us must decide for ourselves whether or not that answer stands up to the test of reality and makes sense of life’s deepest problems and questions.

If you honestly and earnestly seek out the answers, you have an unmatched opportunity in this week ahead – Holy Week – to find them. As we walk with Christ’s disciples the world over in The Way of The Cross, that road leads ultimately on to Good Friday, the final "Day of Atonement". I can tell you personally, in concert with all God’s People down the ages, that the One you will find on that Cross, on that "hill far away", on that darkest and yet most glorious day in all human history, is the only answer that makes sense our of suffering and evil, and all of life’s big questions. For it is there that God deals with my sins and your sins, ‘once for all’.

In this greatest-ever week, Holy Week, come and see for yourself. Through God’s holy Word and Sacraments, enter ever more deeply into the mystery of God’s love for us in the wounded, Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s Saving Death and Resurrection,

Fr. Gerry, Priest and Pastor, Anglican Parish of Gagetown

For God so loved the world…

that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him, should not perish, but have eternal life!

~ Gospel of St. John 3:16