What If Jesus Had Changed His Mind?

During several agonizing hours spent being beaten in Pilate’s praetorium, struggling along the Via Dolorosa, being nailed to a cross and then pierced by a soldier’s lance, Jesus left a trail of blood that eventually became memorialized in the Stations of the Cross—a devotion the Church tends to focus on during Lent but one that we should, perhaps, also pay attention to during July, the Month of the Precious Blood.

We were asking for trouble, but He gave us mercy instead.

It can be easy to go through the Stations and simply view them as the worst and cruelest display of ingratitude in the history of the world...which they are. But they also put a spotlight on the incredible exercise in restraint that makes it very plain there was a loving and divine God making His way through that all-too-human day, allowing Himself to feel every all-too-human ounce of its cruelty.

What do I mean by restraint? Had Jesus not been both a remarkable human being and a LOVING, divine God, He could very well have told us all to take a hike. Yes, He’s meek and humble of heart, but we're not talking about Cowardly Lion meekness and humility, we're talking Aslan-style meekness and humility.

In Jesus’ case, being meek means He knows His own strength and refuses to use it on us out of love. Being humble means He's willing to treat us with kindness and understanding in the face of our fallen nature, going even so far as to take the heat for OUR transgressions.

He could have ghosted us instead of Holy Ghosting us.

It’s frightening to think that, had he been anything other than God the Son and the very essence of love, Jesus could have at any moment said, "I’m done," stopped the entire passion scenario in its tracks and with it our chances of salvation:

Station 1: Jesus could have brought the entire praetorium down around Pilate's ears, pulled the Pharisees oversized phylacteries over their eyes, and then gone looking for Peter to have a brief word about his job performance.

Station 4: When he met His mother, Jesus could have said "Mom, let's blow this funky clambake!" then whisked her home to the Father in an Ascension/Assumption two-fer.

Station 5: Instead of having Simon of Cyrene help Him carry the cross, Jesus could have told him, "Wanna see something cool?" and thrown that cross all the way to the Dead Sea like a balsa wood glider.

He could have gone back to Heaven and told the Holy Spirit, "Stand down. People don't deserve You."

He walked that road so we could follow Him.

Jesus didn't take any of those easy outs; that would have meant leaving us without a way to get home to Heaven and be reunited with Him. He suffered incredible punishment at the hands of men He could have dismissed from existence with a thought, because He knew ordinary humans could never survive the level of atonement necessary to open those gates, or even attempt it for that matter. You can't send a finite being to do an infinite being's job; the sacrifice required to close the chasm opened by Original Sin called for perfection...it was way beyond our purity-grade. 

If you’re interested, you can hear this idea laid out, kind of Johnny Cash style, on my music pages. Check out the song here or the lyric video here.

But far more important than that…let’s all dig out our Lenten Stations of the Cross pamphlets and take a summer road trip of gratitude along the Via Dolorosa in honor of the Precious Blood this month.

P.S. Check out on extraordinary minister's thoughts on Eucharistic reverence here.