A Message for Holy Week and Easter

We are about to celebrate the very heart of our faith as we reach Holy Week and Easter.  The liturgies of Holy Week make present the events that redeemed us and which make it possible for us to lay hold of the gift of everlasting life.  We follow the events through as companions of Christ.  

Sometimes, we might wonder why Jesus had to suffer and die; and, indeed, God could of course have chosen to redeem us by some other means.  But the reason Jesus suffered and died is because that is what people did to him.  He accepted upon himself all that the world could possibly do to him and, in doing so, showed us that love is stronger than death and will always triumph over it.  But, yes, God could have redeemed us without all that.  He could, presumably, have forgiven us for our own sins and the sins of the world and simply bestowed eternal life upon us automatically.  But that would have rendered us powerless; we would have been reduced to a kind of robotic status; and that would have offended against the genuine free will with which God had endowed us in the first place. It would have rendered us incapable of making a loving response to him.

The medieval theologians made a helpful distinction between God’s absolute power (potentia absoluta), the power he could exercise; and his ordered power (potentia ordinata), the power he chooses to exercise.  This distinction helps us to see that, whilst God could have redeemed us any way he chose, he chose to do so by freely limiting the power he exercises.  This latter way was essential if our freedom to act is to be honoured.  Whilst this means that bad things can happen in the world, our freedom is safeguarded and we can therefore enter (freely) into a loving relationship with him and which has salvation as its proper end.

So, God’s exercise of his potentia ordinata meant that Christ might suffer the Passion and that God would choose to redeem us through the infinitely more difficult and costly way of love, inviting (not forcing) people of every time and place to respond to Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection freely and taking hold of the gift he offers.

We might say, then, that a world in which bad things can and do happen is the best of all possible worlds; since the alternative is a world in which we have no freedom at all.  And, of course, bad things do happen.  Just last month, 49 people lost their lives in a terror attack in New Zealand.  Many more people have been left bereaved or injured.  The attacker was a far-right, Hitler-admiring extremist who hated Muslims and anyone whom he perceived to be somehow ‘other’ than himself.  His psychological make-up is very similar to that of the Islamic extremists we hear about.  What they have in common is a sense that they are absolutely right, and that there is no doubt whatsoever as to the justness of their cause.  Only someone with such a mindset can become a murderous terrorist or a suicide bomber.  Thankfully, the vast majority of people, even those with very strong convictions - be those convictions political or religious - are balanced enough to see that others have insights to offer and that we can learn from those others through a healthy interchange with them.

So as we prepare for Holy Week and Easter, pray for those who have suffered as a result of terrorism, pray for the conversion of the hearts of terrorists and extremists of any kind; and pray that, as we celebrate the heart of our faith, others may be moved to make a free and loving response to the God who chooses to honour our freedom by merely inviting us to respond to him.  The message of Easter is that, no matter what happens here and now and no matter what our sufferings, his love will always triumph.