Were You There When They Crucified My Lord Clip Art

At first, the question seems similar nonsense ...

"Were you lot in that location when they crucified my Lord?" I hope that you've heard the erstwhile African-American spiritual before, sung at to the lowest degree on Skilful Friday, if not throughout Lent.

It seems simple bordering on childish, with its repeated stream of questions, simply don't let that fool you lot. The song works on united states like an optical illusion–stare at information technology long enough, and suddenly y'all meet it in a whole new way. Far from being childish, information technology actually tells us everything we demand to understand to fully participate in the season of Lent.

Were you at that place when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were y'all there when they crucified my Lord?

Verses:
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you in that location when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?

"Were you at that place when they crucified my Lord?" At beginning, the question seems like nonsense. You want to say, "Of course I wasn't; that was a really long time ago." But the line asks however again, insisting that you accomplish into the recesses of your memory, and try that reply again. It's an urgent question, and a personal one: "Are you sure yous weren't there?"

Well, yous and I may not have been there, only the singer says that she was. And the terrible event happened so recently that, she insists, it however "causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble." Not only hasn't the mind forgotten, but the body still feels information technology. So she asks us once again: "Were you lot there?"

The song goes on to draw our attending to the details. The crucifixion was the general event, but our focus is turned to the nails, then the tomb, and then, not to be forgotten, the empty tomb. Information technology's almost like somebody trying to refresh your memory. It's plenty to have us asking ourselves, what other ways of "being at that place" can at that place be, short of physically being present?

Part of an answer is constitute in the refrain: "Sometimes, it causes me to tremble." If the thought of what happened makes y'all tremble, that is a very real way of bringing your trunk to a identify where, previously, only your heed has gone. And if your mind and trunk are both nowadays to an event, can't you say that, yes, you are there?

But in that location's an even more real sense in which we tin can answer, "Yes, I was there." Jesus is not "the Lord," here, merely "my Lord." The term is specific. Non "our Lord," but mine, personally. That'southward because the Crucifixion wasn't for the world as a whole, it was for each of us–personally. Whether or not I was there, thinking of Christ, still nosotros understand that He was there, thinking of me. So yes, to Jesus, dying on the cross, I was there.

That fundamentally personal element of the Crucifixion has some other side to it, though. Christ died for usa in lodge to save united states from our slavery to sin, and from the death that proceeds from those sins. On the cross, he dies in our place, taking on himself the punishment that ought to have been ours. It is through even our sins, which Jesus brought with him to the cross, that nosotros are there on Calvary as well.

Read more than:
Exercise you hate confessing your sins to a priest? Let this motivate yous

Then far, the ways that nosotros are there with Jesus at the hour of his decease have been figurative. Merely there is one way that we are physically, actually there with Christ–so real that nosotros can reply, non "I was there," simply "I am there."

The Church building teaches that the cede of the Mass is the aforementioned cede of Christ, at Calvary, made present to united states today, but in an unbloody manner. Jesus is not killed again and again, just his sacrifice is notwithstanding, truly present in every Mass. We are at that place. It is non just Jesus' honey that is present to the states, but his physical body as well, through the Eucharist. We don't merely remember how his cede saved us; the Mass brings that cede through to each new day.

Read more:
The Eucharist IS Jesus, just have faith: Pope Francis

This simple hymn, with its persistent, unyielding questioning, forces united states to reverberate on what we've been taught–that Jesus' dearest, and Jesus' very self, is every bit present and personal to us today every bit information technology was to the people he walked with on Earth, 2,000 years ago. We were there back then, when he was crucified, and nosotros can exist in that location with him still.

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Source: https://aleteia.org/2018/03/17/an-urgent-question-and-a-personal-one-were-you-there-when-they-crucified-my-lord/

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