By His Knowledge My Servant Shall Justify Many – Good Friday – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church, Burns, Oregon; April 19, 2025

St. Paul writes to the Galatians, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and gave himself up for me. (Gal 2:20) Each one of us needs to recognize, believe, and accept the love of Jesus Christ, so as to be able to make St. Paul’s statement our own; each one needs to be able to say “he loved me and gave himself up for me.” Jesus did not just love humanity; he did not just love those who betrayed and crucified him 2,000 years ago; he did not just love Peter, James, and John; he did not just love his mother, and Mary Magdalene, and the other holy women. He loved and loves each one of us here and now. He loves us not just with his divine and eternal love; he loves us with the human love of his Sacred Heart.

How can that be? Jesus cannot love us personally unless he knows us personally.

There can be no problem in recognizing that as the Son of God, who was with the Father from before time began, Jesus knows and loves us personally, just as the Father knows and loves us personally. There can be no problem in recognizing that having risen from the dead, having ascended into heaven, and having taken his seat, in his human nature, at the right hand of the Father, that he now knows and loves each one of us personally, here and now.

But when he was arrested in the garden, when he was tried before the high priest and then before Pilate, when he was nailed to the Cross, how did he know me, in a human fashion, so as to love me? How did he know me, here and now? How did he know each one of us gathered here in this Church today? As a man how did he love me so as to give himself up for me?

Jesus, the one who died for us, is true God and true man. Both are of utmost importance for us. It is important that he is one with us because it as a man like us in all things but sin (Heb 4:15, Third Council of Constantinople) that he is able to die for us. It is important that he is true God, one with the Father, because it is insofar as he is consubstantial with the Father that his death is able to atone for our sins and unite us to God. It is the one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is both true God and true man. The two natures retain their distinctive properties, but are united in the person of the Son of God, one of the Holy Trinity. That means he loved us with his divine love and he showed his divine love for us through his human love, the love of his Sacred Heart.

We are presented with a problem here because a common contemporary image of Jesus imagines him as living and acting, knowing and loving, in exactly the same fashion as we do – groping in the darkness of this world. This image places a sort of ‘firewall’ between his divine and human nature. The result is that we are presented with a very human Jesus with whom we can identify and who provides us with an example that we are able to follow. But, then, we are left with the question, “How can I truly believe that this man, who walked on the earth 2,000 years ago, loved me and gave himself up for me?”

We can say and affirm this truth, not just because of the writing of St. Paul; we can believe this truth also because of what has been made known to us by St. John, the beloved disciple who laid his head upon Jesus’ breast during the Last Supper, who left us with the treasure of his Gospel, which we have heard from today, as we do every year on Good Friday.

Last night, listening to John’s account of the Last Supper we heard, Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end … So during the supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, with that knowledge, he rose from the table and very deliberately washed the feet of his disciples. (Jn 13:1,3)

Today we heard that he went to meet those who were coming to arrest him, knowing everything that was going to happen to him. And before freely bowing his hand and handing over his spirit, aware that everything was now finished, in order that Scripture might be fulfilled, he said, ‘I thirst’.

John shows us the man Jesus going through his Passion and death with a full and complete knowledge of what he is doing. John shows us clearly that there is no ‘firewall’ between Jesus’ divine and human nature; John shows us that Jesus’ human mind is filled with divine light and knowledge.

How that can be possible is beyond our comprehension, but once we believe and accept it, then we can believe and accept that as Jesus cried out, I thirst, he saw each one of us, he saw each one of us and thirsted for the response of our love.

Once we believe that Jesus’ human mind is filled with divine light and knowledge so as to know each one of us, to know our life story, to know our hidden wounds, our sins and our sufferings, then we can begin to grasp the full extent of the meaning of the words of the prophet and how they were fulfilled in Jesus: it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured … the Lord God laid upon him the guilt of us all.

You see, if Jesus’ human knowledge did not greatly exceed the capacity of a Jewish man of the 1^st century it would be easy to think that all the horrific tortures endured by human beings during the course of the past century far exceed the sufferings of Jesus during the short space of a few hours on the Cross. It would be hard to characterize Jesus as the man of sorrows.

But, if Jesus’ human mind was able to share in the very knowledge of God to such an extent that he could see, humanly, in detail, the whole of human history and each person, each sin, each suffering, each sorrow, then he has truly borne the suffering of us all; there is no separation between our suffering and his; we were present to him as he hung upon the Cross.

We heard in the 1^st reading today by his suffering, my servant shall justify many.  A more literal translation would be: by his knowledge, my servant shall justify many. Now we can see how intimately related the two are: Jesus’ human sharing in the divine knowledge multiplied his suffering beyond our comprehension, bringing upon him the burden of all our sin and sorrow.

When we grasp that truth, then we can place ourselves in the Gospel scene and realize that it is not just an act of our imagination. We can place ourselves in the Gospel scene and look up at the Cross and return the gaze of Jesus; we can hear him speak to us, and we can speak to him. We can respond with love to the one who loved us and gave himself up for us.