Seven Words

Fourth Word

FIFTH WORD “I thirst.”

Sometimes, in difficult situations and circumstances, we also say these words that our Lord cried out at that blessed moment on the cross. And like Him, we do it because the first thing we experience is that feeling of abandonment and loneliness.

For example, the person who goes to the doctor for a routine check-up and receives the news that they have terminal cancer is very likely, I think, to ask why God has abandoned them.

And if we add that this person considers themselves very good, that they help their parish, that they receive Communion every Sunday and that they are also in the parish prayer group, wouldn’t the question be a fair one?

I would answer that, very likely, yes. We are not exempt from feeling or experiencing this loneliness that is born of helplessness, of our human fragility.

Even I, as a priest, when I was in that jail cell, I asked this question – not once but many times. And do you know what the beautiful thing was that happened to us?

The Lord Himself visited us!

How? In the Real Presence of the Holy Eucharist. We all cried because we had doubted His word, “I will be with you…” (Matthew 28:20). One of us said kneeling in His Presence, “God is also a prisoner with us.”

Brothers and sisters, God is always with us in good and joyful moments, but He will also be with us in difficult moments. Who can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ? Nobody, nothing. Neither the problems, nor sufferings, nor the difficulties … nor the death.” Let us read Romans 8:35, and take heart.

— Fr. Óscar Benavides

Being thirsty is one of our natural needs. We cannot live without water. With this word, our Lord shows us all His humanity. He truly became flesh. He is both God and man, and as a man He totally resembled us, except in sin.

He had already told His disciples on one occasion that He was not a ghost. He is really a man, and He feels pain, tiredness, hunger, etc.

And here on the cross He feels thirsty, the thirst of a tortured person, the thirst of someone who is suffering death and living in true agony.

In St. Mark’s Gospel we are told that the soldiers gave Him wine mixed with myrrh (Mark 15:23). In those times, this mixture served as an anesthetic and drug, thus helping the crucified or the tortured to alleviate and forget their pain. The most interesting thing is that the verse continues: “but He did not take it.”

Thus, while many of us want to escape from the reality of suffering, we would like to have a mixture of “wine and myrrh” that momentarily takes us away from pain.

We would like to have a magic wand that solves all our problems, or a wine and myrrh that makes our cross more bearable and light.

While we think, seek or desire that mixture of “wine and myrrh,” our Lord Jesus rejects it, does not take it, and endures His pain with courage and love.

Love and suffering go hand in hand. He who truly loves, surrenders to the extreme. Behold the thirst of the Son of God.

We too in this world experience tiredness and thirst. There are many who thirst for peace and justice, who thirst for love.

How thirsty some are in our own towns, in Nicaragua, and in the whole world. People thirst for freedom and justice, and only He, the source of living water, can satisfy us and fill all our gaps and shortcomings. He is the living water.

— Fr. Ramiro Tijerino

SIXTH WORD “It is finished.”

Jesus, dying on the cross, has thus manifested the desire and will of His Father. He Himself will say that His food is to do the will of His Father.

Why is it hard for me to do the will of the Father? Personally, the problem lies in the lack of prayer and holiness.

The saint is one who is in the same tune and frequency with the will of God, and this is the fruit of prayer. And if he has to experience adverse moments, we do not see him renege. On the contrary, he lives it with peace and is happy to suffer it in the name of Jesus.

There are many examples among the saints. To mention one, we see St. Ignatius of Antioch begging the people he shepherded not to stop his being crushed by lions.

Prison is not the place where one can manifest more tranquility and peace. For this reason, we always asked ourselves: Is it God’s will that we be here?

We were not able to get an answer immediately, as we would have liked, but as time went by, God was answering this and other questions.

When we managed to talk to the brothers in other cells, they told us what they had experienced from the moment we entered the prison. It was a joy, because if you were there, God was there too.

Hope returned that one day we would go out. The officers began to treat them better – even the food improved – but above all, many returned to the faith, and there was not a cell where they did not pray the Rosary.

God allowed us to go to jail to save us all physically and spiritually. “Everything is accomplished.” Let’s ask ourselves: Was all this for me?

— Fr. Óscar Benavides

Seventh Word

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

The whole life of Jesus was a constant prayer. No activity was carried out, not a decision was made without first praying. And when His disciples asked Him: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1), He invited His disciples to say: “Father ...”

Here, in this last word, in this moment of agony and death, but which is also a moment of encounter, pray saying: “Father.”

Surely Jesus spoke in Aramaic, in which the word would have been “Abba.” This word was typically used only inside the home, as it connoted intimacy and a special relationship. It was an expression of filial love, but a love that was felt and lived, just as a child who approaches his father experiences it.

Thus the Son of God gives Himself to His dad, to His Abba, to His father, and with this He restores that relationship between God and men, a relationship that had been broken because of sin.

Jesus gives Himself to His Father so that He can be raised from the dead. He surrenders His spirit to the Father with the confidence of the Son, with the hope that His Father will give Him the name above all names, that is, with the hope of the resurrection.

This is the confidence and hope with which we, who are also children of God, must face death and experience each event of our lives.

With the death of Christ, death is defeated as the final destiny of the human being. In this way we can, with great faith and hope, say with the apostle Paul that “neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor present nor future nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).