The Seven Last Words

[Lil Red]

I'd like to share with phatmass, quotes from the booklet "The Seven Last Words" by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. (I think I picked it up on amazon for $5 or something like that. It's well worth it.)

 

From the introduction:

There was never a sermon like the Seven Last Words.

Those seven words, unlike the words of dying men, never died. They were caught up in the ears of that vast audience and then echoed down over the hillside of Jerusalem and through the labyrinth of men's minds, waking even the dead from their graves. Now even in this hour they are caught up by our own poor hearts that must decide, once more, if they will be tempted by the love of that Savior. Calvary is the new mountain of temptation, and it is not now Satan tempting Christ, but Christ tempting us - tempting us to love the Love we fall just short of in all love.

[Lil Red]

The First Word: Father, Forgive Them For They Know Not What They Do

 

It seems to be a fact of human psychology that when death approaches, the human heart speaks its words of love to those whom it holds closest and dearest. There is no reason to suspect that it is otherwise in the case of the Heart of hearts. If He spoke in a graduated order to those whom He loved most, then we may expect to find in His first three words the order of His love and affection. His first words went out to enemies: "Father, forgive them," His second to sinners: "This day you will be with Me in Paradise," and His third to saints: "Woman, behold your son." Enemies, sinners, and saints - such is the order of Divine Love and Thoughtfulness.

 

...

Everyone expected a cry, but no one -- with the exception of the three at the foot of the Cross -- expected the cry they did hear. ... the great Heart on the Tree of Love poured out from its depths something less a cry than a prayer, the soft, sweet, low prayer of pardon and forgiveness: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

 

...

Forgive them, why? Because they know what they do? No, because they know not what they do. ... If they knew what they were doing and still went on doing it, unmindful of the fact that the very blood which they shed was capable of redeeming them, they would never be saved! Why, they would be damned if it were not for the fact that they were ignorant of the terrible thing they did when they crucified Christ! It was only the ignorance of their great sin that brought them within the pale of the hearing of that cry from the Cross. It is not wisdom that saves; it is ignorance!

 

...

It is not wisdom that saves; it is ignorance! It is only our ignorance of how good God is that excuses us for not being saints!

[Lil Red]

The Second Word: This Day You Will Be With Me in Paradise

 

Perhaps, too, [Dismas'] first intimation that he was suffering with the Redeemer came to him as he turned his tortured head and read an inscription which bore His name, "Jesus"; His city, "Nazareth"; His crime, "King of the Jews." At any rate, enough dry fuel of the right kind gathers on the altar of his soul, and now a spark from the central Cross falls upon it, creating in it a glorious illumination of faith. He sees a Cross and adores a Throne; he sees a condemned man, and invokes a King: "Lord, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom."

...

It was the thief's last prayers, perhaps also his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything and found everything. When our spirits stand with John on Patmos, we can see the white-stoled army in Heaven riding after the conquering Christ; when we stand with Luke on Calvary, we see the one who rode first in that procession. Christ, who was poor, died rich. His hands were nailed to a Cross and yet He unlocked the keys of Paradise and won a soul. His escort into Heaven was a thief. May we not say that the thief died a thief, for he stole Paradise? 

...

God is more anxious to save us than we are to save ourselves.

...

I see now why Peter was not made Your first vicar on earth until after he had fallen three times, in order that the Church of which he was the head might forever understand forgiveness and pardon.

[Lil Red]

The Third Word: Woman, Behold Your Son

 

Then came Nazareth and the carpenter shop where one can imagine the Divine Boy, straitened until baptized with a baptism of blood, fashioning a little cross in anticipation of a great Cross that would one day be His on Calvary. ...One can, too, imagine His Mother seeing in each nail the prophecy and the telltale of a day when men would carpenter to a Cross the One who carpentered the universe. 

...

From the Cross He completed His last will and testament....To whom, then, could He give the two treasures which He loved above all others, Mary and John? He would bequeath them to one another, giving at once a son to His Mother and a Mother to His friend. "Woman!" It was the second Annunciation! The midnight hour, the silent room, the ecstatic prayer had given way to the mount of Calvary, the darkened sky, and a Son hanging on a Cross. Yet, what consolation! It was only an angel who made the first Annunciation, but it is God's own sweet voice which makes the second.

...

Mary, then, is not only the Mother of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, but she is also our Mother, and this not by a title of courtesy, not by legal fiction, not by a mere figure of speech, but by the right of bringing us forth in sorrow at the foot of the Cross. It was by weakness and disobedience at the foot of the tree of God and Evil that Eve lost the title, Mother of the Living; it is at the foot of the tree of the Cross, that Mary, by sacrifice and obedience, regained for us the title, Mother of the Living. What a destiny to have the Mother of God as my Mother and Jesus as my Brother! 

[Lil Red]

The Fourth Word: My God! My God! Why Have You Forsaken Me?

 

The next two words, the fourth and the fifth, betray the sufferings of the God-Man on the Cross. The fourth word symbolizes the sufferings of those abandoned by God; the fifth word the sufferings of God abandoned by man.

 

When our Blessed Lord spoke this fourth word from the Cross, darkness covered the earth. It is a common remark that nature is indifferent to our griefs. ... But the sun refused to shine on the crucifixion! The light that rules the day, probably for the first and last time in history, was snuffed out like a candle when, according to every human calculation, it should have continued to shine. ... If the soul of God were in darkness, so should be the sun which He had made.

...

"Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?" ... It is a cry in the mysterious language of Hebrew to express the tremendous mystery of a God "abandoned" by God. ... But just as the sun's light and heat can be withdrawn from us by the intervening clouds, though the sun remains in the sky, so there was a kind of withdrawal of His Father's Face in the terrible moment in which He took upon Himself the sins of the world.  ... It was the supreme act of atonement for three classes of people: those who abandon God, those who doubt the presence of God, and those who are indifferent to God. 

 

He atoned first of all for atheists, for those who on that dark midday half believed in God, as even now at night they half believe in Him. ... It was the Divine Act of Redemption for all abandonment of God, for in that moment in which He was forgotten, He purchased for us the grace of never being forgotten by God.

 

... It was reparation for all the haunting questions of a doubting world: 

"Why is there evil?"

"Why does God not answer my prayers?"

"Why did God take away my mother?"

"Why" ... "why" ... "why"? 

And the reparation for all those queries was made when God asked a "why" of God.

 

...One can well believe that a crown of thorns, and that steel nails were less terrible to the flesh of our Savior than our modern indifference which neither scorns nor prays to the Heart of Christ. 

[Lil Red]

The Fifth Word: I Thirst

 

Although it stands in our language as two words, in the original it is one. ... Out from the depths of the Sacred Heart there wells through parched lips one awful word: "I thirst!"

 

...He asks man for a drink! Not a drink of earthly water, that is not what He meant, but a drink of love. "I thirst" - for love!

 

...The Creator cannot live without the creature, the Shepherd without the sheep, the thirst of Christ's love without the soul-water of Christians.

 

...Love, first of all, means to give and God has given His power to nothingness, His light to darkness, his order to chaos, and this is Creation. Love means to tell secrets to the one loved, and God has told in the Scriptures the secrets of His Nature and His high hopes for fallen humanity, and this is Revelation. Love means also to suffer for the one loved, ...and God is now suffering for us on the Tree of the Cross, for "greater love than this no man has, than to lay down his life for his friend." Love means also to become one with the one loved, not only in the unity of flesh but in the unity of spirit, and God has so loved us as to institute the Eucharist, that we may abide in Him and He in us in the ineffable unity of the Bread of Life. Love wishes also to be eternally united with the one loved, and God has so loved us that He has promised us His Father's mansions, where a peace and a joy reign which the world cannot give and time cannot take away, and this is Heaven.

 

...Having poured forth all the water of His everlasting Love on our poor parched hearts, it is no wonder that He thirsts for love. If love is reciprocal then certainly He has a right to our love. Why do we not respond? Why do we let the Divine Heart die of thirst for human hearts? 

[Lil Red]

The Sixth Word: It Is Finished

 

From all eternity God willed to make man to the image of His eternal Son. ... In some mysterious way the revolt of Lucifer echoed to earth, and the image of God in man was blurred and ruined.

 

The Heavenly Father in His divine mercy willed to restore man to his pristine glory. ...For the disobedient man Adam, there was the obedient man Christ; for the proud woman Eve, there was the humble virgin Mary; for the tree of the garden, there was tree of the Cross.

 

...For the last three hours He had been about His Father's business. The artist had put the last touch on His masterpiece and with the joy of the strong He uttered the song of triumph: "It is finished." 

 

The work of acquiring Divine life for humankind is finished, but not the distribution. ... He has finished the foundation; we must build upon it. ... He stands at the door and knocks, but the latch is on the inside, and only we can open it. ... Whether our work will ever be finished depends entirely on how we relive His life and become other Christs, for His Good Friday and His passion avail us nothing unless we take up His Cross and follow Him. 

[Lil Red]

The Seventh Word: Father, Into Your Hands I Commend My Spirit

 

..the new Abel, Christ, is now put to death by His jealous brethren of the race of Cain. The life that came out from the boundless deep now prepares to return home. ... His seventh and last word is one of prospect: "Into Your hands, I commend My Spirit." The sixth word was meant for the world; the seventh word was meant for God His Father. The sixth word was a farewell to earth; the seventh His entrance into Heaven. 

 

... The Prodigal Son is returning to His Father's house, for is not Christ the Prodigal? Thirty-three years before He had left His Father's eternal mansion and went off into the foreign country of this world. Then He began spending Himself and being spent; dispensing with an infinite prodigality the divine riches of power and wisdom and bestowing with a heavenly liberality the divine gifts of pardon and mercy. ... He now prepares to take the road back to His Father's house, and when yet some distance away He sees the face of His Heavenly Father. He breaks out into the last and perfect prayer from the pulpit of the Cross: "Father, into Your hands I commend My Spirit."

 

All the while Mary is standing at the foot of the Cross. ... When the tragic moment comes it may seem to the tear-dimmed eyes of Mary that Bethlehem has come back. The thorn-crowned head which had nowhere to lay itself in death, except on the pillow of the Cross, may, through Mary's clouded vision, seem the head which she drew to her breast at Bethlehem. Those eyes at whose fading even the sun and moon were darkened were to her the eyes that glanced up from a crib of straw. The helpless feet riveted with nails once more seem to her the baby feet at which were cast gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The lips now parched and crimsoned with blood seem the ruddy lips that once at Bethlehem nourished themselves on the Eucharist of her body. .. The embrace at the foot of the Cross seems the embrace at the side of the crib. 

[IcePrincessKRS]

:like:

[Kateri89]

I just bought and read that book during this Lent. I think it was really good but there were points where I thought he was reaching for a connection between a certain beatitude and Calvary. Nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed it :)

[Lil Red]

I just bought and read that book during this Lent. I think it was really good but there were points where I thought he was reaching for a connection between a certain beatitude and Calvary. Nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed it :)

 

Are you talking of the same book? This book isn't "The Cross and the Beatitudes: Lessons on Love and Forgiveness". This is titled "The Seven Last Words". :) (BTW, I have "The Cross and the Beatitudes" as well, and have also thoroughly enjoyed it.)

[Kateri89]

Oops yeah my mistake--haha sorry I just jumped to the bottom of the page to reply. That'll teach me to read things more carefully :)

[Tufsoles]

I like that. I am in a situation right now where one of my residents is considered hospice. They love the fact that the catholic nursing staff understands the true meaning of dying(mainly me and the DON/ADMIN. ) Mainly, Comfortable dying. Yes, Christ died in Pain but there is theological/scriptural  reasoning but God want us to die in comfort. I.E. Giving enough pain meds to make them comfortable but not to the point of causing their death.