Angles on the Paschal Mystery pt. 2
Fourthly, Christ’s Paschal Mystery is the proof of God’s love for us. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows His love for us in this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” For people who are alienated from God out of fear, the Cross proves the depths of God’s love. For people who think that they’re unworthy or unloved by anyone, we can point them to the Crucifix and say, “look, when we gaze upon Jesus on the cross, that is a sign and demonstration of the depths to which God the Father loves you. God the Father would send His only-begotten Son to go to the ultimate point, to go even to death for your sake. That is how much you mean to God. God loves you to death and that calls for a response. You need to give your life to God in a relationship of love so that love may be returned to God.”
Fifthly, the Paschal Mystery is Christ showing us the way to be saved. In John 14:6 we read, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by Me.” Similarly, Luke 9:23-24 says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for My sake, he will save it.” You see, Jesus’ self-gift on the Cross shows us the path to return to God the Father. That path is a life of self-giving love, even to the point of death. Giving oneself away to the point of death is how we actually find ourselves and discover meaning and God in our lives. The cross is a demonstration of the path to return to the loving Creator God and experience His Fatherhood in our own lives.
Let’s talk about the relevance to evangelism of understanding the different aspects of the Paschal Mystery. The point here is that different aspects of Christ’s saving work are going to speak to the different felt-needs of the people with whom we converse and with whom we do ministry. When we’re doing evangelization with an individual, some individuals are going to need to be assured of God’s love for them. That’s their biggest felt-need: they feel unloved by those around them. Maybe they had dysfunctions in their family upbringing, etc. They’re searching for love, they’re searching to be embraced, to feel like they are important. Not only to feel that, but really to be that, and they are, and they need to be assured that God loves them and the definitive proof of God’s love for them is the fact that God Himself would die for them on the Cross. We want to emphasize that with them.
Others may desperately want to be free from the forces of evil they are experiencing. We are going to encounter people that are dabbling in the occult, that are drug-addicted, that feel very oppressed, that feel like they are living under bondage. They may even be having manifestations of spirits in their life. They need to hear that liberating power that Christ has defeated Satan and the evil spirits and can liberate them.
Others feel profound guilt and need to know that they are forgiven for something that they’ve done in their life. Maybe they’ve committed and profoundly evil act against someone, maybe they’re suffering from the wake of an abortion and dealing with the guilt of that. They need to know that they are forgiven and that Christ has paid the price for their sin and they can be received back into God’s merciful embrace if they will accept that payment and the punishment that Christ received.
Others are looking for a better way to live. They are exploring different life philosophies, maybe they’ve dabbled in eastern religions, maybe they’ve read a little bit of philosophy. Maybe they’ve read self-help books, Jordan Peterson, who knows? They’re trying to figure out “how should I live my life, to experience life to its fullest?” With persons like that, we want to emphasize that aspect of giving one’s self away through love which Christ demonstrates definitively won the Cross as the perfect way of living one’s life the way that finds meaning and love and communion at its end.
Depending on where people are, we want to emphasize different aspects of the Paschal Mystery with them.