With His last breath, He cries out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” And He gives up the Ghost.
Thunder roars; the earth shakes. The veil of the temple is torn in two. The gates to Paradise stand open. All that was held in secret is now revealed.
The Son of God gives up the Ghost, into the Father’s hands.
Where is the Father?
The Father is above the Firmament, where we could not trespass until the gates were opened. But the Father is also here on Earth. The Father is everywhere present and filling all things, and there is nowhere you could go to escape Him– even if you descended into hell.
The Son of God gives up the Ghost into the Father’s hands, and descends into hell.
And where does the Ghost go?
The Ghost goes everywhere, because the Ghost returns to the Father’s hands and the Father is everywhere. The Ghost rises to Heaven and descends into Hell. The Ghost flows out over the earth. The Ghost falls upon Mary and the Beloved Disciple; the Ghost seeks out the other Apostles hiding in shame; the Ghost fills the temple and tears apart the veil because the Ghost is the Spirit of Truth and nothing can be hidden from the Ghost. The Ghost smashes the tombs. Holy people are raised to life and seen by many in Jerusalem. Where the Ghost is welcomed, Creation is transformed, because the Ghost is the Spirit of God.
The Father is eternally pouring Himself into the Son, and the Son is eternally pouring out Himself into the Father, and this pouring is the Ghost, the Holy Ghost. This has always been. Today, on Good Friday, the mystery of the Holy Trinity is spoken on human lips. “Father, into Your hands I commend my Spirit.”
And He gave up the Ghost.
He gave the Ghost to us; He breathed on us, and descended into hell.
He will give the Ghost to His disciples again before His ascension, and the Ghost will descend in tongues of fire at Pentecost, but He also gives the Ghost to us today. Today, with His last breath, He breathes the Ghost into the hands of the Father who fills all things, and the Ghost comes to us. The Ghost smashes the stone-cold tombs encasing us. Light flows into darkness. Flesh flows over bone, breath fills the lungs, warm blood flows in cold veins. Into Your hands, Lord, I commend my Spirit. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The pulse returns, we arise, and go into Jerusalem, and are seen by many there.
Nothing that falls into the hands of the Father can ever be lost, because the hands of the Father are everywhere.
Nothing that falls into the hands of the Father can remain dead, because the Ghost is eternally given up to the Father.
No one who commends himself to the Father will fail to find himself in the Father’s hands.
Nothing in the Father’s hands can remain dead, because the Ghost is there.
The Ghost is life.
The Son of God could have brought His beloved from death to life by any means He wished. He chose this one: to come into the world and dwell among us as a human being, to receive from us whatever we wished to give Him without resisting– and then give us life, His life, His own life, His life’s breath. We receive the life of God through the exhaling of Life’s breath, real breath, air, from human lungs.
All things are accomplished now. The marriage is consummated; the wine is gone; the human race is forever united to her Creator. We are drawn into the movement of the Trinity as the Ghost covers the whole earth.
“Father, into Your hands I commend my Spirit.”
And He gave up the Ghost.
(image via Pixabay)
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