ARE YOU WITH ME?

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I’d like to start off this essay with a short prayer focusing on the moment when Christ died for our salvation at 3:00 pm on the afternoon of His Crucifixion :

Dear Lord, remembering the hour when You experienced death so that we might have Eternal Life, may we appreciate in our hearts the necessity of Your sacrifice for us. And with Your help, Your guidance, and Your grace, may we be made worthy of it.

In a private church approved revelation, Jesus told Gabrielle Bossis a French Catholic Mystic and laywoman in 1941, as recorded in a wonderfully moving book of her messages from Him entitled He and I, that He can see time at a glance, and that thus he was able to revisit his Passion that way.

Christ’s nightmarish visions in His Agony in the Garden of all the world’s depravity and indifference to His Gospel Message have been revealed to us by various mystics, along with Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

Our Lord was literally sweating blood then in the Garden of Gethsemane as His Passion began. And it was no wonder considering that He saw all the malfeasance and ingratitude that would lie ahead from so much of sinful humanity for whom his upcoming sacrifice at Calvary would be in vain!

Christ’s sacrifice for us would indeed be a God sized sacrifice, in His human nature, to fully reconcile sinful humanity to our loving God! (Remember that Jesus is “true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father”, as we say in the Nicene Creed, with two natures, one human and one divine!)

We do read in Anne Catherine Emmerich’s moving account of that evening in the book of her visions entitled The Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ that Jesus did receive angelic consolations afterwards.

These included a vision of a multitude of saints and martyrs throughout the centuries to come for whom Jesus’ supreme sacrifice at Calvary would indeed be worth it. This Army of the Righteous, as it were, probably strengthened Him to do His Father’s will and undergo His Passion, Death and subsequent Resurrection for our Salvation!

With that in mind, I offer here the following meditation entitled “Are You with Me?” which in part includes some insights gleaned from church-approved private revelations. While we focus so much on Christ’s Passion during the Lenten season, such reflection year round can make us see how much the Triune God loves us and hates sin at the same time.

Imagine Jesus saying to each one of us, to you personally “Are You With Me?” as He prepares for and then undergoes His Passion, hoping that His sacrifice will not have been in vain for you, that He can see you among the those who achieve salvation and Eternal Life with Him as He asks:

Are You With Me?

In the Garden of Gethsemane I’m literally sweating blood at the thought not just of the brutality of what I must suffer so that scripture might be fulfilled but of all the countless souls in the centuries to come who will nonetheless be lost, for whom it will have been useless!

Not just the scoffers and unbelievers, but worse, those chosen consecrated souls, my priests and other religious who would emulate not my beloved disciple John but rather Judas, the son of perdition!

In addition I’m haunted by the thought of seeing all those souls I created out of love for them giving them the free will to choose Me falling into Hell instead. Their God won’t be Me but rather their own money and power, riches that will rust and decay over a brief time, ensuring not their glorification and salvation but instead their damnation!

Yet I must go forth to suffer and die a brutal ignominious death so that sinful mankind can once more be reconciled to my Heavenly Father, whom souls can then call their Heavenly Father as well!

Are You With Me?

The Crowds that were shouting “Hosanna” in my Name just a few days ago will now be in hiding following My arrest. Now that My hour has come to make this supreme sacrifice, I’m being physically assaulted by my captors and treated like a human pinata suffering numerous kicks and blows.

And I’m being calumniated by those who seek my downfall and destruction who call me a blasphemer, an insurrectionist, and even a sorcerer among other slanderous accusations before the Sanhedrin’s hastily assembled trial which is more like a kangaroo court than anything else!

Are You with Me?

I see My Truth scoffed at by countless Pilates asking “what is truth” as if it were something that exists, like beauty, only in the eyes of the beholder. As such, Satan, the Father of lies, is dragging countless souls down to Hell! But what about you, I ask again:

Are You With Me?

Pilate, seeking a way out of this mess, having no love for those calling for my head, has me scourged as if this compromise will satisfy my enemies, But the copious amounts of blood I shed as I endure blow after blow until I barely resemble a human being only whets their appetite more for my crucifixion. I'm enduring these stripes for souls, that they may be healed, as noted in the book of the Prophet Isaiah.

Are You WIth Me?

And as if to add insult to injury even further, I’m crowned by soldiers with thorns jammed into my head, as I'm struck and treated mockingly as a mock king by those some of whom only see me as someone claiming to be a King of the Jews. Clearly they would have no desire to be subjects of my heavenly Kingdom or to be a part of My Social reign on Earth.

Are You With Me?

And when Pilate’s last attempt to free Me fails, he allows himself to be blackmailed by those who would accuse him of aiding and abetting insurrection as being “no friend of Caesar” if he releases Me. He hands me over to my Roman executioners, having washed those hands of his first, of course!

I am forced to carry my heavy cross along what will come to be known as the Via Dolorosa in a thoroughly weakened condition and fall to the ground several times from its weight.

At one point my mother and I exchange heartbreaking glances as she sees me in such a bloody pitiful condition. At that very moment, both of us are filled with overwhelming sorrow. She is unable to help me, seeing me, her Beloved Son like this; and I cannot give her any consolation yet.

I must endure all the pain and humiliation from this nightmarish situation, and it will not end until its conclusion at My death from my crucifixion at Calvary. Yet no one's taking my life from me. I am giving it up, willingly, for humanity’s salvation! Once again, I ask..

Are You With Me?

And finally, as my death approaches for the Eternal Life of souls, I’m nailed to a cross, and suddenly I’m living Psalm 22 as my mouth is as dry as the Sahara Desert.

I can indeed count all my bones and there’s not one part of my body not in abject pain, literally from head to toe, from the crown of thorns on my head to the nails driven into my feet to fasten me to this cross, which is about to turn from a symbol of ignominy to one of triumph for those who wish it to be so, in how they follow Me in the ages to come and offer up their own pains and sufferings for souls to Me on the cross, and in carrying their own crosses as well.

In addition, I hear the jeers of my enemies taunting me to come down from the Cross and that then they’ll believe Me, when of course they probably won’t. I’m praying to My Father for mercy and forgiveness for them in this dark moment when it feels like even He has abandoned me.

Yet soon I will commend my spirit into His hands as this Sacred Mission has been accomplished and I rise again, having indeed come down from the cross to conquer death with my Resurrection on the third day, not in any way my enemies, or even my beloved Apostles, could quite fathom.

Are You With Me?

Yet all this suffering will be useless for so many souls, thinking that following some other “Gods” or their own disordered passions will let them break free from the supposed chains of My Commandments.

That “do what thou wilt” rather than “Thy will be done” will bring them freedom! But actually it will just enslave them as they follow one Herod, one Moloch after another who see human beings as expendable in their quest for more and more power! In doing so, these tragically misguided souls will ultimately be serving the one who will not serve, Satan!

I say all this not so you can approach me out of guilt but rather out of love for Me, as is written in Scripture, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and that you may love your neighbor as yourself.

And that looking at a crucifix, you might see just how much I love you but hate sin and your sinful proclivities, and wish to help you fight them continually in your earthly pilgrimage! That my Precious Blood shed on this dreadful day may help wash away any and all of your sins!

And so one final time I ask…when I peer into the future can I see for certain that at least you get it, that my sacrifice and my humanity will enable you to share in my divinity one day, that you will see it was not just some strange futile gesture?

Are You With Me?

God Bless,

Christopher Castagnoli
for www.ourcatholicprayers.com