Merry Christmas to all. Dec 25th has been widely celebrated across globe, to rejoice the birth anniversary of His Holiness Jesus Christ, the Begotten Son, one of noblest of souls, who out of His infinite compassion and mercy underwent the unimaginable agony and suffering of his crucification as an act self-sacrifice for the sake of world. To quote from the Holy Bible
“And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.” - [Hebrews 13:12] In fact, He even at the time of his Crucification, prayed for the welfare of his enemies, the very persons who tortured him to death. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”. [Luke 23:34]
One might ask a seemingly very logical question, why should the Omnipotent God need to undergo this mode of salvaging the universe? Doesn’t he know a simpler method, for after all He is the Almighty God? Well as a response to this I would like to quote here the following verses from Sri Aurobindho’s poetic masterpiece Savitri, wherein the saint-poet very beautifully explains the whole concept behind God’s incarnation into the phenomenal world and His sufferings and sacrifices for the sake of mankind,
He who would save the race must share its pain:
This he shall know who obeys that grandiose urge.
The Great who came to save this suffering world
And rescue out of Time’s shadow and the Law,
Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain;
They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,
On their shoulders they must bear man’s load of fate.
Heaven’s riches they bring, their sufferings count the price
Or they pay the gift of knowledge with their lives.
The Son of God born as the Son of man
Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead’s debt,
The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind
His will has bound to death and struggling life
That yearns in vain for rest and endless peace.
Now is the debt paid, wiped off the original score.
The Eternal suffers in a human form,
He has signed salvation’s testament with his blood:
He has opened the doors of his undying peace.
The Deity compensates the creature’s claim,
The Creator bears the law of pain and death;
A retribution smites the incarnate God.
His love has paved the mortal’s road to Heaven:
He has given his life and light to balance here
The dark account of mortal ignorance.
It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice,
Offered by God’s martyred body for the world;
Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,
He carries the cross on which man’s soul is nailed;
His escort is the curses of the crowd;
Insult and jeer are his right’s acknowledgment;
Two thieves slain with him mock his mighty death.
He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour’s way.
He who has found his identity with God
Pays with the body’s death his soul’s vast light.
His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.
Hewn, quartered on the scaffold as he falls,
His crucified voice proclaims, ‘I, I am God;’
‘Yes, all is God,’ peals back Heaven’s deathless call.
The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts,
The flower of Godhead grows on the world-tree:
All shall discover God in self and things.
But when God’s messenger comes to help the world
And lead the soul of earth to higher things,
He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose;
He too must bear the pang that he would heal:
Exempt and unafflicted by earth’s fate,
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
He covers the world’s agony with his calm;
But though to the outward eye no sign appears
And peace is given to our torn human hearts,
The struggle is there and paid the unseen price;
The fire, the strife, the wrestle are within.
He carries the suffering world in his own breast;
Its sins weigh on his thoughts, its grief is his:
Earth’s ancient load lies heavy on his soul;
Night and its powers beleaguer his tardy steps,
The Titan adversary’s clutch he bears;
His march is a battle and a pilgrimage.
Life’s evil smites, he is stricken with the world’s pain:
A million wounds gape in his secret heart.
He journeys sleepless through an unending night;
Antagonist forces crowd across his path;
A siege, a combat is his inner life.
Even worse may be the cost, direr the pain:
His large identity and all-harbouring love
Shall bring the cosmic anguish into his depths,
The sorrow of all living things shall come
And knock at his doors and live within his house;
A dreadful cord of sympathy can tie
All suffering into his single grief and make
All agony in all the worlds his own.
He meets an ancient adversary Force,
He is lashed with the whips that tear the world’s worn heart;
The weeping of the centuries visits his eyes:
He wears the blood-glued fiery Centaur shirt,
The poison of the world has stained his throat.
In the market-place of Matter’s capital
Amidst the chafferings of the affair called life
He is tied to the stake of a perennial Fire;
He burns on an unseen original verge
That Matter may be turned to spirit stuff:
He is the victim in his own sacrifice.
The Immortal bound to earth’s mortality
Appearing and perishing on the roads of Time
Creates God’s moment by eternity’s beats.
He dies that the world may be new-born and live.
-Sri Aurobindho’s Savitri (Book 6 - Canto 2)
Again one of the esoteric messages, behind The Holy Cross of the Christian faith, is the ideal that the ego ‘I’ should be destroyed - that is, cross (destroy) the ego. In fact, Jesus very clearly emphasizes that, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” [The Holy Bible – Mark 8:34]
The Cross is also one of the greatest symbols reminding to humanity the value and importance of sacrifice and love for humanity. Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi, highlights the spiritual significance of the Cross:,“Christ is the ego. The Cross is the body. When the ego is crucified, and it perishes, what survives is the Absolute Being (God) ,(cf. “I and my Father are one”) and this glorious survival is called Resurrection”
On this sacred day, let us all whole heartedly, contemplate on the unparalleled sacrifice of Lord Jesus the Savior and sincerely thank & pray at His Holy Feet and rest assure we shall be saved.
As the saying goes, “more things are wrought by prayers than this world dreams of”. An in fact, Jesus does answer our prayers. As testified in the Holy Bible “Jesus answered him, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’.” [Luke 23:34]
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