Crucifixion of Jesus

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I peered into the Incarnation's beauty: Jesus is fully God and fully human. He didn't merely act like a human; he wasn't a human-like wraith. He was God living a genuinely human life, which means God himself begged for mercy on a dark night.

How is it that Jesus' death accomplishes the forgiveness of my sin? By what cosmic mechanism does that take place?

This argument assumes God can't transcend our own moral limitations. Just because we may cry for justice and vengeance when we are wronged doesn't mean God will.

In the weeks before Easter, during the traditional season of Lent, Christians fix their hearts on the death of Jesus Christ. They reflect upon what he endured because they believe that it was redemptive.

For Christians, this is one of the most important weeks of our liturgical calendar. This is the week that we should be contemplating what we never want to contemplate: death.

Death was more than something for him to endure, just so he could rise again. Jesus' execution forever writes an identity upon him, as indicated in the Gospels' accounts of his resurrection.

Why would God send Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God, dying for the sins of the world, instead of just destroying sin, or perhaps offering grace and forgiveness to the very ones created by God?

It is unreasonable to look for scientific evidence of God's existence. Whether there is or is not a creator who subsists completely outside of the universe cannot be proven or disproven.

Amid the great tensions, contradictions and reversals in their flight to the Promised Land, the Israelites glorified God. Liturgical singing in churches today glorifies Our Lord in the same way.

As we begin our religious observances this week, I hope that we will keep in mind the Maureens and Megans among us: dear to God even in death, but so deserving of a life of here on earth.

Atonement theology says, "Jesus died so we might live." It suggests that the torture and murder lamented this Friday is "good."