WDJD?

Remember the popular “WWJD?” bracelets? They were a constant reminder to live and love like Jesus did.

Maybe it’s time for a NEW bracelet: “WDJD?”

This time not “What would Jesus do?” but “Why did Jesus die?” Note the difference: it’s not hypothetical—would, but real—did. It isn’t about me and my moral choices—What should I do now? It’s rather about Christ, whose example sheds light on the choices I am called to make.

I vividly remember standing among over 10,000 faithful at the Way of the Cross on Good Friday of 2005, wondering who wrote the beautiful reflections and prayers, as men and women religious, priests, seminarians, and laypeople from every continent carried the cross around the Coliseum in an intense atmosphere of prayer. At the end, the cross was taken by Cardinal Ratzinger, since Pope John Paul II was already gravely ill. From his private chapel in the Vatican the Pontiff followed the ceremony by television, where he was undergoing his own Way of the Cross in first person. I didn’t find out until afterwards that the reflections for that year’s Way of the Cross had been written by Cardinal Ratzinger himself, who would become Pope less than a month later!

“WDJD—Why Did Jesus Die?” is the underlying theme in the entire Way of the Cross. Since today we begin Holy Week, these texts should us prepare ourselves to accompany Jesus all week long. These selections outline Pope Benedict’s answer to why Jesus died:

Opening Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, for our sake you became like the grain of wheat that falls to the earth and dies, so that it may bear much fruit (John 12:24).”

Fourteenth Station: “Jesus is the grain of wheat which dies. From that lifeless grain of wheat comes forth the great multiplication of bread which will endure until the end of the world… Through the death of the grain of wheat you give us yourself, so that we too can dare to lose our life in order to find it, so that we too can trust the promise of the grain of wheat.”

Christ takes the paradox of suffering and turns it on its head – precisely because we suffer, we are fruitful, in spite of the apparent evil and uselessness of suffering. Christ suffered for our sake; he was not a masochist, but he knew why he suffered. We are willing to run through fire for the ones we love, but Christ wanted to do much more than that for us.

Second Station: “The price of justice in this world is suffering: Jesus, the true King, does not reign through violence, but through a love which suffers for us and with us. He takes up the Cross, our cross, the burden of being human, the burden of the world. And so he goes before us and points out to us the way which leads to true life.”

Christ shows us that love is greater than justice; though we deserved death for our sins, he offers us life through his death on the cross, walking before us as our example.

Third station: “In Jesus’ fall beneath the weight of the Cross, the meaning of his whole life is seen: his voluntary abasement, which lifts us up from the depths of our pride.”

Seventh Station: “He gazes on us, he touches our hearts; he falls in order to raise us up.”

Ninth station: “What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? … Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? … What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall! All this is present in his Passion.”

Only when we fall can Christ pick us up; if we never experience the fall, we begin to think we can trust in ourselves, and we have no reason to feel the need for Christ.

Fifth station: “The mystery of Jesus, silent and suffering, touched his heart. Jesus, whose divine love alone can redeem all humanity, wants us to share his Cross so that we can complete what is still lacking in his suffering (cf. Colossian 1:24).”

Christ does not suffer alone; he suffers in each of his children, and we are called to unite our sufferings to his in order to make them fruitful. His blood has redeemed the world, but he asks us to help this redemption reach all souls.

Eighth station: “Yet as we contemplate the sufferings of the Son, we see more clearly the seriousness of sin, and how it needs to be fully atoned if it is to be overcome. Before the image of the suffering Lord, evil can no longer be trivialized.”

Modern society has forgotten the sense of sin. When we contemplate the cross, it is impossible to ignore the suffering we cause through each of our sins, even the ones that “don’t count”.

Tenth station: “The Lord passes through all the stages and steps of man's fall from grace, yet each of these steps, for all its bitterness, becomes a step toward our redemption: this is how he carries home the lost sheep.”

While Christ carries his cross, he carries all of humanity as well. We do the same when we offer our suffering for those who need God’s grace.

Eleventh station: “You allowed yourself to be nailed fast; you did not try to escape or to lessen your suffering. May we never flee from what we are called to do.”

Jesus teaches us to stretch our hands out willingly; because he opened the gates of Heaven for us, death is not an end, but a new beginning.

Twelfth station: “Now he has radically fulfilled the commandment of love, he has completed the offering of himself, and in this way he is now the revelation of the true God, the God who is love. Now we know who God is… He takes to himself the whole suffering people of Israel, all of suffering humanity, the drama of God's darkness, and he makes God present in the very place where he seems definitively vanquished and absent.”

Here we find the ultimate answer to “WDJD?”: he died because he loved us. Only love can justify God’s crazy plan to become man and to offer himself up on a cross.

By Colin Gore