Stabat Mater (1873), Evgraf Semenovich Sorokin
“Pro nobis”.
The earliest Christians were very wise when they included these words in the Creed. When they wished to put down in definitive form what they believed about God and his Son Jesus, they added two little words – “pro nobis”. “Pro nobis”, the Son of God became man, and “pro nobis”, he was crucified, died, and was buried.
Today, perhaps above every other day of the year, those two little words should resonate with us – “pro nobis.” For us.
“Why did Jesus have to die?” I remember that was the very first question that I was asked when, as a newly admitted seminarian, I visited a 3rd grade classroom at the school of my home parish. What a simple question – and yet, how mysterious. If you begin to think about it, it is a question that bewilders the mind, that confounds reason and logic, a question that seems almost unanswerable. The saints in history have penned long and beautiful sermons, men and women throughout the ages have fled the civilized world to the silence of the desert to pray and meditate, entire books of the Bible have been composed – all in an attempt to answer it.
And yet, as the earliest Christians knew, the answer is succinct enough: “pro nobis.” Christ came to earth and suffered and died for us – that is, not simply “for our benefit”, to rescue us from the sin that had plagued us from ancient days, to defeat once and for all the power of the devil and the curse of death that sin had inflicted upon the world. He also died “pro nobis” – that is, “in our place”, submitting to the awful fate that would have been ours. Jesus died because, out of love for us, he took upon himself what was our due.
There is a tendency among us, even among us faithful Christians, to water down this idea. We tend to think, as the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, that the Cross was just the terrible end to an otherwise happy and god-fearing life – that Jesus, out of humility and love, submitted to a cruel fate as a testament to non-violence and forgiveness. But, this idea – and it’s one that all of us at times fall victim to – misses the crucial point: God did not just cancel our debt: he paid the debt himself. He did it knowingly and willfully, “pro nobis.” For us. In our place.
The Cross reveals to us who God is and how God loves us, and this is very very important. Nowadays everyone talks about God, everyone has an idea of what God might be like, but isn’t it true that that “god” is so often a projection of ourselves? How often do we hear, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe in God.” But what God? How God? What does God do? The answer to these questions is not in our conceptions or ideas but in the image of the Cross. “God is love,” we say, and he is, but not just warm, fuzzy love that makes us feel good – God is Love with pierced hands and feet and side, crowned with thorns, and dying in agony from the Cross. Pro nobis. For us. In our place.
If any of this is a bit unsettling, and it probably should be, then perhaps it’s a sign for us that we haven’t really incorporated the meaning of the Cross into our lives. It’s true that we are “an Easter people” as they say – and we never want to think about the Cross as if we didn’t also know about the Resurrection. But the reverse is also true – the Resurrection could not have occurred without the Cross. The Cross without the Resurrection is utter despair; if Jesus has not risen, as Paul says, we are the poorest of fools. But equally true is that the Resurrection has no meaning without the Cross – it is just superficial, empty, devoid of meaning. Easter Sunday and Good Friday are inextricably linked, and we cannot have the one without the other.
Perhaps we might think, "Well, I don’t like thinking about the Cross – it’s too painful, too dark, too sad." Exactly right. The Cross declares to us, “Evil is real! And you must admit it! You have to face it!” Things are not right. The world is not it should be. There is evil. There is the devil. There is sin. These things exist, they are real, and they are terrible. We can’t color over them. We know them all too well. People get sick. People suffer devastation from tornadoes and floods and mudslides. People die from airplane crashes and bombs and wars and crossing deserts to try to find better lives for their families. People die from hunger and hypothermia, sometimes on our very street corners, and people die out of desperation that their life has no meaning. People are thrown out of their countries and their homes, children are abused and enslaved, people are victimized by addiction and greed and despair and injustice, and all of us suffer in silent ways, hidden ways, ways that only we know about. And all of that is real. And all of that and more is what God faces on the Cross, it is what God on the Cross pronounces his judgment upon, and it is what God on the Cross forgives.
So, “why did Jesus have to die?” Remember the answer: “pro nobis.” The one who said “I AM WHO AM”, appearing to Moses on Mount Sinai, the one who said “I AM” to answer the call of Judas and the betrayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, the one who, at the end of all time, will say “I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who is, who always was, and who is to come” – took upon himself all suffering, all sin, all death – for us, in our place, to declare judgment upon the sin and evil that separate us from him, and to take it away, to forgive it, to carry us – in himself – to the very depths of hell, and having utterly redeemed us, having made all things new, he rose to give us a share in his eternal life.
We gaze upon the Cross today with reverence and awe at such profound forgiveness. And we will venerate it in just a few moments, with love and worship. We do so all too aware that, for us, now, the Cross as a symbol of pain and suffering; and yet, we also must believe that contained there, in its meaning, it is also the sign of God’s power and victory, a glory which we will only understand once we also behold the Resurrection. And, yet, in the Eucharist, we will be drawn ever more closer to that final reality, as we receive the One who hung upon the wood of the Cross, now Resurrected and at the right hand of his Father. We taste there, in his Body and Blood, now glorified, a preview of the joy of the Resurrection.
So, my friends, “Ecce Crux Domini” -- Behold the Cross of the Lord. Behold in it the infinite power of a God who humbled himself for us; behold the ineffable majesty of a Lord who loved us and took our place, who suffered for us in order to forgive us, who died for us in order to redeem us. “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world. Come, let us adore.”
(Grateful acknowledgement to Hans Urs von Balthasar, Robert Barron and Thomas J. Neal for some of the ideas and language herein..)
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