1 Peter 3:18-22, Romans 5:6-11

Much like the Pharisees felt about others, we may feel for ourselves. In all truth we have chosen against Love Itself in which our being subsists, let alone salvation from our own conniptions. God's love is so bold, even as we witness it from a distance (let alone live in it), there is something almost bewildering about it.

The Bridge (Romans 3:23, 6:23)

• Catherine of Siena: Because you cannot pass this mortal life without pain, and in Me, the Father, there can be no pain, but in Him there can be pain, and therefore of Him did I make for you a Bridge. No one can come to Me except by Him, as He told you in the words: 'No one can come to the Father except by Me.'

• Our due is nothing pleasant as regards our sin, but as regards our Divine sonship we are brought to be in His likeness who suffered.

• Matthew 16:24-26; Luke 14:27

  • Christ exhorts His followers to lay down their lives, and to take up His own. There is nothing greater in cost nor in benefit. There has never been a higher cost and never more at risk.

  • We can take what we can get of this life and prepare for the the worst in the next or we can surrender this life and attain much in the next, free of pain and hatred.

  • God deals us an ultimatum: Either we except His love or suffer eternity without it.

  • This is actually the first mention of the cross, but any Jew knew what this meant. According to the expositor commentary it is more a characteristic of disciple ship than a prerequisite

• Revelation 3:16; Matthew 5:37

  • God makes it clear there is no other path

• 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 12:1

  • Our body is a temple, destined for worship not only in word and prayer but sincere repentance and sacrifice, Make of yourselves living sacrifice

• Colossians 1:24 

  • Christ calls us to follow after Him, there is a singular thing missing. It is You, your will to be united to His i.e. the will of love par excellence. His grace has provided all else.

• Acts 2:42

  • The fullness of the Christian life is multifaceted but involves the teaching of the Apostles, the sacramental gifts He has offered us, and each other. There is no way to get to heaven without these.

  • Every prefigurement of this time in the Old Testament witnesses this fact, the Catechism itself is structured this way.

(Optional but here if the point about Church teaching is appropriate)The Catechism of the Catholic Church is arranged to instruct us in this way of life:

The four parts are related one to another: the Christian mystery is the object of faith (first part); it is celebrated and communicated in liturgical actions (second part); it is present to enlighten and sustain the children of God in their actions (third part); it is the basis for our prayer, the privileged expression of which is the Our Father, and it represents the object of our supplication, our praise and our intercession (fourth part).

The Liturgy itself is prayer; the confession of faith finds its proper place in the celebration of worship. Grace, the fruit of the sacraments, is the irreplaceable condition for Christian living, just as participation in the Church's Liturgy requires faith. If faith is not expressed in works, it is dead (cf. Jas 2:14-16) and cannot bear fruit unto eternal life. In reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church we can perceive the wonderful unity of the mystery of God, his saving will, as well as the central place of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, sent by the Father, made man in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be our Savior. Having died and risen, Christ is always present in his Church, especially in the sacraments; he is the source of our faith, the model of Christian conduct and the Teacher of our prayer.

From St. Ephrem

Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.

Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strongroom and scattered all its treasure.

At length he came upon Eve, the mother of all the living. She was that vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of all the living became the source of death for every living creature. But in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of men.

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.

The Catholic Gospel: Transformation & Divine Sonship (2 Corinthians 3:18, 1 John 3:1-2, 2 Peter 1:4)

Was the cross an effective communication of God's Love?

• God came down to our level and loved us in the face ;)

Resurrection/Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)

If the resurrection did not happen, then we will find Christ either a liar or lunatic since that would mean that sin/death won the war. The information we have learned is likely what He taught His disciples as the journey into Emmaues and my hope is that you sincerely feel that way after the next session.

Atonement (CCC 616)

It is love "to the end" that confers on Christ's sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction. He knew and loved us all when he offered his life. Now "the love of Christ controls us because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died." No man, not even the holiest, was ever able to take on himself the sins of all men and offer himself as a sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine person of the Son, who at once surpasses and embraces all human persons, and constitutes himself as the Head of all mankind, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all.

Sonship/Partakers of the Divine Nature (CCC 2009, 460)

Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God's gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us "co-heirs" with Christ and worthy of obtaining "the promised inheritance of eternal life." The merits of our good works are gifts of divine goodness. "Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due. . . . Our merits are God's gifts."

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."

Sanctifying Grace (CCC 2000):

 Sanctifying grace is a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, and to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.

 The Catholic Church holds that 

Hebrews 12:1-12 - Follow Jesus Hebrews

Hebrews 9:14-16 - The Blood of the Covenant

Its context

Jesus, in light of Adam

1. In perfect communion with the Father, both Christ and Adam were tasked with the Father's work

2. Adam renounced the bounds of that work for a seemingly true lie given by the Enemy, out of convenience. In doing so, he lost His immortality, health, innocence/purity, eternal inheritance, relationship with God, and spiritual clarity. He did so with the encouragement of His wife whom He was supposed to guard. Christ, in spite of the greatest possible suffering, chose to witness to the truth, subjecting Himself being God to the confines of standard appearing human life, the worst sufferings possible they contain, and did so for and with the love (allowing us to attain salvation and sanctification by such means) of us who both renounced and/or hated Him at the time.

3. Adam gave it all up on a tree and so did Christ. Adam died through the fruit of a living tree, Christ died and became the fruit of a dead tree. Adam took from a live tree, and Christ gave His life on a dead tree. Christ rose from the dead by following the actions of the Father which was most inconvenient, and Adam died by disobedience to the Father and died in more ways than 1, thereby.

Jesus, in light of Noah

1. God will save the righteous from the unrighteous, but not through Mass destruction (as He promised) and further because of Christ there have been/are/hopefully will continue to be many righteous on earth.

Jesus, in light of David

Before David, the peoplele desired to be like their neighbors and to have a King. For better or worse we worship, God or creature. Who do we choose as King of our life. God chose David to rule after deposing Saul and He was a "man after [Gods] own heart". Now we have God's "Beloved Son with whom [He] is well pleased" the Word i.e. the very will of God, Himself (Isaiah 55:11). Order your life under His rule and unity will be brought, God will be with you more than he ever was with David. All shall flourish under his staff and the breathe of His mouth.

The Division between the Tent of Meeting and the Holy of Holies torn

several modern sources suggest that the thickness of this veil was almost 4 inches thick.

Leviticus 16:2,12-13 

Leviticus 17:4

Exodus 31:7-17

Only priests could enter and they need to be ritually clean, but something changed with Christ 

Matthew 27:49-51 (sometimes "And another took a spear and pierced his side, and out came water and blood" is added)

• God's own heart is opened up for us and we are made able to enter the holy of holies during every mass as where we meet and the mercy seat are no longer separated by a 4in veil

If Desired

Listen to the song and consider the gift that the cross is in knowing how loved we are, and how suffering is a path to God.