In preparation for Holy Week, we remember about our Lord Jesus Christ – His care for others during His sufferings.
In preparation for Holy Week, we remember about our Lord Jesus Christ:
His care for others during His sufferings.
How wondrous is the Lord’s love for humanity. He was always caring for them. Even in the depth of His sufferings, He was occupied with them. And today we would like to speak about His care for His disciples and others in the last days of His incarnation on earth.
As for the ordinary person, when he is in the depth of his sufferings, the pain often presses upon him, so he concentrates all his thoughts and feelings on his pain, not on others—or at least he thinks about death and what comes after death.
But the Lord Christ, during His sufferings and throughout the last week, was fully concerned with human beings, and with all love…
It was for their sake that He came into the world, and for their sake also that He suffered. Therefore it was natural that human beings occupied His mind in the period of His sufferings.
For their sake He refused to become a king on Palm Sunday, because that kingship was a trick from Satan to obstruct the Cross. While the crucifixion was necessary for their salvation. Therefore the Lord accepted to be crucified, to suffer, and to die out of His abundant love for humanity.
And in this last week, He was preparing many things for them. It was necessary to change the old leaderships so that the Church would not be troubled.
He had to remove from before the new Church that He would establish all the leaderships considered honorable in the eyes of the people, all the religious authorities, lest the new believers think they were still remaining.
He had to abolish the Aaronic priesthood so that another priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek might take its place. And to remove from the way the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and lawyers, lest the people look to them as teachers afterwards.
And He had to remove the prestige of the old temple as well…
So that the new believers would not cling to it and to its sacrifices and rituals. Thus He drove out from it the sellers and said, “My Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves” (Matt. 21:13). He even prophesied about it, saying to the Jews, “Behold, your house is left to you desolate” (Matt. 23:38). And He also said that “There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down” (Matt. 24:2).
And behold, the meek and quiet Christ, Who “will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoking flax He will not quench” (Matt. 12:30) (Isa. 42:3), we hear Him crying out:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites… How can you escape the condemnation of hell, you serpents, brood of vipers” (Matt. 23:13, 33).
“For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in… You travel sea and land to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15). And He condemned them, saying, “That on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth…” (Matt. 23:35).
Thus also He rebuked the Sadducees who deny the resurrection of the dead…
And He said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures.” “God is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Matt. 22:29, 32). “And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.”
As for the priests, He gave them the parable of the wicked vinedressers, and said to them at its end, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it” (Matt. 21:43).
At the same time when the Lord was removing the old religious leaderships, He was strengthening and encouraging the new leaders whom He had appointed. He spoke to them about His crucifixion and sufferings, so that His crucifixion would not shake them. And He showed them “that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day” (Matt. 16:21).
And He repeated that, saying, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up” (Matt. 17:22–23).
Thus He connected the talk about the crucifixion with the resurrection to comfort them, and He prepared them for enduring His crucifixion with two extraordinary miracles to strengthen their faith: these were the miracle of granting sight to the man born blind, of which it was said, “Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind” (John 11:39). And as a result of this miracle many of the Jews believed (John 11:45).
His purpose from these two miracles was that they might rely on them at the crucifixion, and not doubt, but believe that He would rise…
He explained to them what was to come, so that when it happened they might believe (John 14:29).
And He comforted them concerning His coming death by telling them that it was beneficial for them, that He might prepare a place for them: He said to them, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2–3).
And He also comforted them by saying that He would return to them again and they would see Him. How deep His tenderness is in His words to them: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18). “A little while, and you will not see Me; and again, a little while, and you will see Me… You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy… Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you” (John 16:19–22). And He concluded this comfort to them by saying, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace” (John 16:33).
“He also told them about the Comforter Spirit, that He would abide with them forever” “and will be in you” (John 14:16–17). And that “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:26). Truly, He was the Comforter before He sent them the Comforter Spirit.
The disciples were sorrowful because He had told them frankly that He would depart from them… His statement about Himself, “The light is with you a little while longer” (John 12:35), shook them deeply. Therefore we see that, in addition to all the previous comforts, He also promised them before the Ascension, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).
Also, how deep are the calming words He said to them: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father’” (John 14:27–28)… “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1). And before He departed, He granted them purity and granted them the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
“He rose from supper, laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel…” Then He said to them afterwards, “You are clean, but not all of you,” for He knew who would betray Him (John 13:4–10). And our teacher John the Evangelist began the story of the Lord washing His disciples’ feet with an emotional phrase in which he said: “Jesus, knowing that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end…” (John 13:1).
This love to the end with which He loved His own was what occupied Him before His departure from this world, and for its sake He was incarnate, and for its sake He died.
With this love He ate with His disciples the Last Supper…
And celebrated the Passover with them. And with this love He said to them: “Take, eat; this is My body. Take, drink; this is My blood of the new covenant” (Matt. 26:26–28). He gave them this great Sacrament so that they might abide in Him according to His promise (John 6:56).
And with this love He kept vigil with them in a long vigil, as though it were a farewell vigil—even if for a while… until He would return to them and their hearts would rejoice. In this vigil He spoke to them at length, all of it comfort, exhortation, and strengthening. It included in the Gospel of John five chapters (John 13–17). And He concluded His talk with them with a long prayer for them, all of it love (John 17).
He would say about them to the Father continually, “Those whom You have given Me.” And He asked the Father, saying, “Keep through Your name those whom You have given Me… I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one…
Sanctify them by Your truth… For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth…” And how tender His heart was when He said about them: “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am” (John 17:24).
He also asked the Father for their unity, “That they also may be one in Us” “that they may be one just as We are one” (John 17:21–22).
He asked also for all those who would believe in Him through their word, that is, for the whole Church. And He concluded that long supplication with His words to the Father: “I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).
Truly, how wondrous is this love that He asked for their sake. And also, when Satan was about to sift them, He asked for them that their faith should not fail (Luke 22:31–32).
The faith of these was what would build the faith of the whole Church; therefore the Lord cared for it, and for its strengthening and establishing, as a strengthening for the faith of the Church.
The Lord did not care only for these leaders, but for everyone:
A touching moment of the Lord in the last week is to see Him weeping over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and saying to her, “How often I wanted… but you were not willing” (Matt. 23:67).
Another touching moment is to see Him in the last week going to Bethany, the house of His beloved ones Lazarus, Mary, and Martha (Matt. 21:17). And a third touching moment is to see His care even reaching Judas the betrayer: He directed many warnings to him. And He allowed him to eat from the same dish. And He showed him such care that it made him later regret, return the money to the chief priests, and say, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4). And had it not been for his despair, his situation would have changed…
And the care of Christ for people reached its depth while He was on the Cross: He cared for those who crucified Him and asked forgiveness for them, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). Thus He not only forgave them, but also sought an excuse for them. And He cared for the repentant thief crucified with Him, answered his request, accepted it, and promised him, saying, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).
And He cared, while on the Cross, for His mother the Virgin, and entrusted her to His disciple John, giving him the blessing of keeping her in his home (John 19:27).
Thus the majority of His words on the Cross were directed to people, or for the sake of people. Was not His entire Cross for the sake of people?
Truly, how amazing is the Lord’s care for humanity… how they were in His heart and in His mind in the most critical times, in the depth of the times of pain.
This was a manifestation of the Lord’s general care for all, as throughout the period of His incarnation on earth He “went about doing good” (Acts 10:28), “and healing every sickness and every weakness among the people” (Matt. 4:23).
God is like this from the beginning. When the earth was formless and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, He did not leave it, and “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). And God adorned this earth with beauty, removed its darkness with light, and filled it with life…
Since God is like this, let our faith in His love be steadfast. And let us trust at all times that He cares for us even without our asking, and even if we do not care for ourselves.
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An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III published in Watani newspaper on 5–4–1998.
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