the suffering christ 792 DISCOURSE V The Light Burden So they took Jesus, and [H]e went out, bearing [H]is own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha. (Jn 19:17) God desired to test both the obedience and the faith of Abraham, the first of the holy patriarchs. So, He granted to the parents in their feeble old age a single little son (which is nothing short of a miracle of nature). That child was the one in whose seed all nations were destined to be blessed and through whom the Hebrew nation was [to become] comparable to the number of the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. So, God commanded Isaac to be offered to Himself as a victim in sacrifice: “Take your son, your only begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Gen 22:2). That righteous parent obeyed the divine voice. Immediately, he began the destined journey: “And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son” (Gen 22:6). Go forward, under the most favorable signs, most divinely inspired old man! For already, you made God so bound to you through your loyal obedience, faith, and especially love, that while sparing your son Isaac, He intended His own Firstborn to be immolated for the salvation of the whole human race. Behold! Now, at the command of the Father, out of His own volition, condemned to execution by the sentence of Pilate, “[H] e went out, bearing [H]is own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha” (Jn 19:17). Let us accompany Him, Christians, but let us not accompany Him without sorrow. For, though the Cross imposed upon Him seems a LIGHT BURDEN47 on account of [His] love for us, we will have 47 The emphasis of these words is copied from the Latin of St. Stanislaus.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI2Mw==