spiritjesus

Jesus Master

Queen of Apostles

St. Paul

Jesus
Master
Healer

Jesus Master
Mentor and Model

Jesus
Master
the crucified
Guru

Christ,
Master
and
Lord

Jesus Master
as Light

Jesus Way
to
Happiness

Jesus is
Master
of Life

Jesus
Master
Divine
Child

JESUS MASTER, THE CRUCIFIED GURU
Sr. Veritas Grau, FSP

All the world loves a winner. What earns the respect of others in a person is his or her capacity to make it to the top, to stay on top, and to display power over others. The power may be expressed in violent control of people’s lives, or in the possession of wealth, or in qualities of the intellect that allow the person to dominate even the inner being of others. Alvin Toffler, in his book POWERSHIFTS gives these three sources and manifestations of power, laying great stress on the third, the power that flows from knowledge. It is above all in the arena of knowledge and truth and the manipulation of communication (helped by the prodigious expansion of communication and information technology) that the struggle for power in the new millennium will be waged.

For this reason, Jesus as Master Teacher, Guide, Life-giver should find a hearing in our present world. The trouble is that Jesus conceives and exercises power in a radically different way from the usual patterns. In fact, Jesus’ power looks suspiciously like powerlessness. Yes, as a teacher he opened up a whole new realm of truth about humanity and its goal of fulfillment and happiness. His words shook his hearers, challenged their narrow views about life, and touched minds and hearts to the point of radical change. “No man has ever spoken like this man.”

But his power rejected violence. He could have amassed great wealth but he chose to be poor, insignificant in the world’s eyes. He had followers who came after him, attracted by his teaching, but he rejected positions of power and refused to be the kind of leader that the masses desired.

Looked at with the eyes of the world, Jesus was a born loser, and what makes him even more contemptible is, he chose to be a loser. At the end, he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver and even his clothes were stripped off him and the soldiers cast lots for them. Worldly violence prevailed and crushed him on the cross with the cruelest death possible in his time. He who was known as the wisest of the wise chose to live, proclaim, and die for a message that was foolish, intolerable, incomprehensible to rational minds, a message of self-giving, service, empowerment of others to the point of personal vulnerability and weakness.

Yet the power of Jesus Master has proven to be more powerful than that of the world. M. Thomas Thangaraj in his book The Crucified Guru sums the whole situation thus: No longer was it (the cross) the tragic and unfortunate death of a guru. The cross became the supreme and climactic point at which the guru was seen as being fully himself -- the embodiment of what he taught and did. It became a symbol of the guru’s victory over sin and death. By his powerlessness on the cross, the guru gives a fresh and novel understanding of wherein lay true power -- the power of love and self-sacrifice. On the cross the guru is no longer seen as a mere polestar to the way of liberated existence, but he himself can now be seen as “the way, the truth and life.” ...It is no longer the teacher-guru who dominates the scene, but the victim-guru, the dying guru, the crucified guru who appears as the guru par excellence. (P.56)

We Filipinos count as one of our most steasfast devotions that to the suffering Christ, the Christ who died for us --symbolized by the Black Nazarene of Quiapo. The reading of the pasyon is still a strong tradition during Holy Week. The Christ we honor as King, as the Santo Niño, as the Sacred Heart is all one with the Christ who shares suffering and faces death with us. His resurrection assures us that death does not have the last word, that pain will pass away, that suffering and dying are channels that allow the flood of God’s divine mercy to flow upon us. By his wounds we are healed, his scarred hands provide for us, his pierced heart is our compassionate refuge.