Terminating the Cycle of Evil
Evil begets evil. It is contagious. Evil tends to infect its recipients with the disease of evil. Like the venom of a poisonous snake, evil contaminates, corrupts and kills.
How did Jesus terminate the cycle of evil that his loveless and insolent creatures launched against him? How did he bring it to a conclusion?
Jesus had access to unlimited divine resources for his defense (Matthew 26:53). Yet, he did not fight back. He did not answer the evil that we did to him in kind. He did not give us a taste of our own medicine. He did not require "an eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Exodus 21:24)(Matthew 5: 38-48). He did not release the three-headed monster of revenge, retaliation and retribution from the dungeon of his broken heart to devour us.
Instead, Jesus drew and threw. From his toolbox of prodigious love, Jesus drew the monkey wrench of forgiveness and threw it into the gears of evil to bring the cycle of evil to a sudden and screeching halt. His love for us terminated the cycle of evil that we launched against him. Vis-à-vis the machinery of evil, Jesus was a neo-luddite.
Jesus exploited the evil that we did to him to reveal to us the prodigious love of God. He turned the evil that we did to him into the foundation from which he launched a revolution in our understanding of God (Viva La Revolution). How? The evil that we did to him allowed Jesus to answer it. And the answer that he gave surprises us. It gobsmacks us. It knocks us off our horse (Acts 9:4). By his answer, Jesus created the strongest force on earth. It gives Christianity its magic, Jesus his charisma, us, our joy and bishops and clergy the power to change the world. His answer creates the need in us to turn aside, like Moses, to see the great sight (Exodus 3:1-3). His answer is the Good News of Great Joy. His answer transubstantiated his bloody wounds into the floodgates of forgiveness (Luke 23:34) (Malachi 3:10). Through them, the sweet syrup of love in the form of forgiveness (Jeremiah 31:31-34) (Luke 23:34) (Matthew 26:28) poured into the Valley of Tears to dilute its toxicity in the same way that sugar cubes dilute the bitterness of a cup of bad coffee. Dilution is God's solution to the problem of evil.
The news that Jesus still loves us despite the evil that we did to him is the cataclysmic earthquake that resets the world on a new foundation. It upsets the status quo. It turns the world upside down and inside out. It transforms the old covenant into the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
Jesus did not dispatch his army to storm the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18) unarmed. Jesus recruited, trained and equipped his army with a powerful weapon to wage war against his enemies. The bread and wine of forgiveness that Jesus forged in the furnace of affliction (Isaiah 48:10) from the flesh and blood of sacrifice is the battering ram that knocks down the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18) so the prodigious love of God can enter and establish his kingdom (Luke 17:20-21) in our stony hearts (Ezekiel 36:26). Only love depetrifies hearts of stone and fleshifies them. Only love begets love. Only love is the antidote to the venomous bite of evil.
Jesus refused evil’s offer of a demotion. He refused a reduction in his dignity. He made the decision to stay on the level of our loving God instead of descending to the level of the loveless beasts who scavenge for scraps among the ruins of Eden in cutthroat competition with the other loveless beasts. Jesus refused to allow evil to reproduce itself within him (Matthew 5:38-40). Evil did not find a foothold in Jesus. Jesus gave evil no purchase. There was no room for evil to enter the inn of his most Sacred Heart (Luke 2:7). Love had reserved all of the space for itself.
The evil that we did to Jesus did not extinguish the bonfire of love that burns for us in his most Sacred Heart or reduce its intensity by even the slightest degree. The dial that controls his love for us is in his hands not ours. Moreover, it is set to the highest degree and is locked in place. Not even the evil that we did to him could budge it. His love for us survived the evil that we did to him. He emerged from the dead still alive and still in love with us. That he emerged from the dead still alive revealed to us his power. Nobody emerges from the dead. He did. That he emerged from the dead still in love with us, however, revealed to us something more significant about divinity than power. Our conception of divinity as power is incomplete - flawed. Divinity is also love - a mysteriously intransigent, inexplicably persistent and radically stubborn love (Isaiah 55:8-9) (Psalm 8:4-8) (Lamentations 3:22-23) (Jeremiah 31:3).