If you knew how gratifying it is for me to receive such encouraging feedback from you and Galilee, Michie...
You never know when a devotion is going to take a hold of you, Michie. I couldn't get enthusiastic about reading the Bible, perhaps partly because, though rascally agnostics and atheists, we heard a great deal of scripture over the years in morning assemblies. It was only much later, though, that I realised how much of it had been absorbed subliminally.
Anyway, the turning point came when I read a book by the Abbot Marmion, called Chrlst ln his Mysteries. And the particular passage: when he described Jesus' brief conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. And the crucial point he made? That Jesus sat down beside the well, because he was tired. perhaps I should have become aware of it long, long before, since it's implicit in his being fully human. Maybe, at least subliminally, I had imagined that, being fully divine as well, he would exploit that. It became very clear at that point that this was not the case. Far from it.
The only times he resorted to his divine power was for our sakes, not his own. Almost all his most striking miracles he reserved for his closest disciples. But more than that, you know how you can have kind of unworthy thoughts sometimes (only judging by my own standards!!!), well I once found myself wondering if, maybe Jesus had avoided or tempered a little some of the worst aspects of his Passion and crucifixion.
Instead, some of the latest information obtained from the Holy Shroud of Turin demonstrates that, far from that being the case, lacerated by his scourgng, tired, and doubtless hungry and weak, after a while, Jesus must have fallen flat on his face under the weight of the cross,or the cross member, if that was what he had had to carry, he evidently dislocated his shoulder and, I believe it said, he broke bones in his face - yet other painful tortures to bear on the cross. So, it seems as if he was determined that no one crucified should have it worse than he did.
However, they also discovered that he was nailed twice to the cross, having made a mess of the job the first time. I believe it was a complete re-crucifixion but I'll need to look at the YouTube clip again, and read it more closely. Even to have to bear a second nailing in one hand and one foot, sounds hideous, doesn't it?
And as for him being considered to have died quite soon, after three hours, well I'm amazed that he lasted that long, in view of his life of extraordinary asceticism, and the stresses he had suffered then and particularly in his Passion up to that point.
It was after that enlightenment by the occasion at the well with the Samaritan woman that I gradually became increasingly aware of the, often highly-amusing, nuances of human behaviour displayed by the disciples, the people and even Jesus himself. It gives me a wonderful feeling of warmth towards them. Or, in the case of the religious leaders, it tends to have me in stitches, as I recognise the incidents and anticipate the punch-line Jesus invariably delivers, to their great discomfiture and blind rage.
