T
tonyrey
Guest
First, I don’t think that blood was the necessary sacrifice. Before you jump all over me, hear me out. The Jews practice of blood sacrifices was inspired by God. Why? It might well have been simply because God wanted to prefigure what He planned to do in sending His Only Begotten into the world to be our blood sacrifice. But just because God did in fact make Himself a blood sacrifice does not necessarily mean that it was the only way He could have done it, that is, save us from our sins. I would speculated that the smallest gesture on His part as the innocent victim would have been quite enough being that it came from the Almighty God.
Also, it seems reasonable that for an innocent victim to make up for the sins of mankind, that victim must suffer the worst of the just consequences of sin, and that is death itself. IMO, which is purely speculative, dying in his sleep would have satisfied this requirement, if indeed it is a requirement.
So why did He decide to suffer humbly and horribly and to die on the Cross? I think it relates to the condition mankind is in and the fact that simply opening the gates of heaven for anyone who would be sorry was not far enough in the Eyes of Love. Man, as we have seen down through the ages and probably in our own lives as well, repents one day, and sins the next, so it’s not a done deal that mankind will repent once and scamper off to eternal bliss. The atonement on the Cross did not take away the effects of sin. Concupiscence still exists. Suffering still exists. Hunger still exists. Homelessness still exists. Illness still exists. Men are still able to commit sin. Wars still exist. Imprisonment still exists. Man’s inhumanity to man still exists. That’s an awful lot of “still exists” to contend with even after the Almighty makes His supreme sacrifice! I think herein lies the answer.
We recognize in the Hail Holy Queen that we are “banished children of Eve” in a place of “sighs, mourning and weeping.” What a horrible place! Not so? Well, maybe that’s because we live in a land of great wealth that isolates us from a direct look at the horror all around us, from the millions who die of disease and starvation each year in other countries, to the millions who languish in prisons, to the billions of poor around the world. 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty—below $1.25 a day—and nearly two and half billion people live on less than $2 a day.* And even in our luxury with its thousands upon thousands of available distractions, we, too, find sorrow and suffering in this life, despite our efforts to anesthetize ourselves from feeling it.
God saw all this. He saw how nearly hopeless our condition was. He loved us with such a passion that He figured out a plan by which He could bring the maximum number of Eve’s children back from exile into the Paradise He had always planned for them. He knew the difficulty we would be facing even after His heroic sacrifice, and so He decided on a course of action that would show us in human terms how we are to live and how we are to walk the road to Paradise, that is to our deaths, the last effect of sin that we must all experience in this life.
He put us all on the road to Calvary by instructing us that there is no way out of our present difficulties except by acceptance of the hardships and suffering that are integral to our fallen human condition. He showed us how. He said we must keep God’s commandments and follow Him. His passion and death was more than just the sacrifice to atone for our sins, it was the example for us of how we must face adversity, relying on God to see us through. I don’t mean that he wants us all to die on a Cross, only that He wants us all to learn how to love unselfishly as He did. And don’t worry, we’ll all die!. Carrying our own personal cross, perfectly fitted to us, and following Him, is the way to Paradise. The gates of heaven are open, but the way is narrow and difficult. There is suffering and sorrow along the way, but by uniting it with His passion and death, we transform it into joy and give it redemptive value.
In Jesus we have the perfect example of God’s love given to us in human terms that anyone can understand (He who sees Me, sees the Father). Whenever we lose our way, we need only look back to the Cross and Jesus on it.
Disclaimer: I am not a theologian. My thoughts and speculations are my own and do not necessarily reflect the teaching of the Catholic Church. Hopefully, they are not contrary to anything taught by the Church, If something is contrary, I will be happy to correct it. .
A superb response!