Friday, April 4
The Messiah, Loreen Hernandez.
Content warning: abuse, trauma
“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin… through him the will of the Lord shall prosper…The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities… because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors…” Isaiah 53:10-12
What is a transgressor? It is a person who has violated a command or law, or who has trespassed a boundary; in other words, a sinner. A transgressor, from our perspective is a person who has sinned against God and whose punishment for that disobedience is death. In today’s readings we discover that God will “confront evildoers” and that He will “reproach” those who transgress against His Law. Sin is not a pleasant topic to read, write or talk about, but is most often the elephant in the room as we try to maneuver through the obstacles, road bumps and dead ends that life brings to us on our journey toward wholeness and holiness. In both the first and last reading we discover how sin causes blindness and ignorance.
Both the “wicked” in the Wisdom reading, and the “inhabitants” in the gospel reading are blind to the Truth of who God is and “merely to see Him is a hardship” for all of them. What we often don’t talk about is how our blindness through sin leads to broken spirits and broken hearts, it’s hard even to think about God for fear of being called out and exposed. But the Psalm ensures us that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted. As a survivor of abuse, it took me many years to understand that the sinful choices I continued to make over and over again were out of a desperation to fill a void of love that could only be filled by Jesus Christ. I know firsthand what it’s like to be blinded by sin, and I know what it’s like to bear that heavy load of shame caused by the constant cycle of sin and abuse, to feel emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually crushed by it.
Is this where you are right now? Are you in a place where you would give anything for a moment of relief from the heavy load of sin that you bear? Wherever you are in your journey, these readings bring us solace, not just because we know that we have victory over our sin through Christ’s saving work, but in those very intimate moments where we know and understand that Jesus has been where we are. Not only does Jesus identify with you in your shame and sorrow, but He takes it all upon Himself and He does it out of love.
During these last weeks of Lent, I pray that God will give you the grace of courage to come to him and let Him see your sin so He can in turn bear that burden of shame and brokenness for you. This is the beauty of what happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so you can see how He wants you to stop allowing sin and shame to crush your spirit and give it to the One who was crushed for us. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24) Come and be seen by the Sheep who was slaughtered for you. The spotless lamb who saw you while He was on the cross, despite your sinfulness. Come and be named a transgressor no longer, but whole and healed. He offers nothing but life, a life of freedom and victory for you, His precious child.
Loreen Hernandez loves creating colorful, inspiring, mixed media oil paintings that celebrates the kind of beauty that can be found anywhere. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband and fur babies. When she’s not painting you will find her crafting, reading, or playing her ukulele. She loves laughing with her husband, snuggling with her animals, and traveling—whenever and wherever.
You can learn more about her here.