Pints With Aquinas - Christ died. . . for you. | Holy Week 2025

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 College of St. Joseph the Worker – Earn a degree, learn a trade, and graduate without crippling debt: https://collegeofstjoseph.com/mattfradd 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

Hello, glory to Jesus Christ. This week is Holy Week and so I thought instead of publishing an interview I would read a meditation from St. Thomas Aquinas about the death of Christ My goodness gracious, I love being a Christian and I'm in love with Jesus Christ and I think it might be helpful just to pause and to acknowledge that Jesus Christ the second person of the blessed trinity, went to the cross, suffered unimaginable pain, died, went into Hades, rose from the dead. Why? Because he loves us.

And it's important that we recognize that, but I think it's important that we go beyond it being merely a generic theological truth, it is true that Jesus Christ by his life, death and resurrection saved humanity, but it's also true that he saved you personally, me personally. This is really difficult to wrap our heads around. How is it that God knows us individually, that he knows the number of hairs on your head and on my head, that he doesn't just love us the way a man might love a hive of bees, you know, he doesn't know them individually, he just knows them as a kind of conglomerate. But this is what Christianity teaches and I've often said it's not that Christianity is too hard to believe. I think we've got very good arguments for

the existence of God, the historicity of the New Testament, say, for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I think often it's that Christianity is not too hard to believe, but it's too good to believe. Before I get into this meditation from St. Thomas Aquinas, I want to share with you a quotation that drives this home. It's from Father Jean de Elbaix from the excellent book I Believe in Love which I highly recommend. Here's what he had to say. I assure you we are bathed in love and mercy. We each have a father, a brother, a friend, a spouse of our soul, center and king of our hearts, redeemer and savior, bent down over us, over our weakness

and our impotence like that of little children, with an inexpressible gentleness, watching over us like the apple of his eye who said, I will have mercy and not sacrifice. A Jesus haunted by the desire to save us by all means, who has opened heaven under our feet, and we live too often like orphans, like abandoned children, as if it were hell which had been opened under our feet. We are men of little faith." End quote. And I think this is true. we are men of little faith." End quote. And I think this is true, certainly true in my life.

How often do we pray like the disciples in the boat who hit the storm and were worried for their lives? They say, save us Lord, we're perishing. How often does your prayer sound like that? And Christ rebukes the wind and the waves, but then he turns around and he also rebukes the disciples for their lack of faith. So it seems to me that instead of saying, save me I'm perishing, a more appropriate prayer would be, I thank you that you love me. I thank you that you are saving me and that I can trust you, that I can have confidence in you. And you might be tempted to think that if you have that sort of deep confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ, that this could lead to a sort of presumption. You know, if you're not continually worried about are you virtuous enough, have you repented enough, that your spiritual life will become lax-y-daisy. And increasingly I'm thinking, that's exactly backwards.

If I think that I've got to get my life together, if I've got to get everything in order, become a very virtuous person before I come to the Lord, well, two things will happen. Either I'll go, wow, look at me, look how great I am, look what I've been able to achieve, or more likely I'll fall into despair because I'll see the many ways that I continue to fail.

But instead, if I turn to the good Lord Jesus and I say, my good God, you who lived and died and rose from the death for me, look how much you love me. I put all my trust in you. I put all my confidence in you. Work a good work in me. The work you have begun, I know you will bring to completion. Here's another quote that drives this point home from Fr. Jean de Elbaix. He says, we have been trained in the habit of looking at our dark side,

our ugliness, and not at the purifying sun, light of light, which he is, who changed the dust that we are into pure gold. We think about examining ourselves, yet we do not think before the examination, during the examination, and after the examination, to plunge ourselves with all our miseries into the consuming and transforming furnace of his heart, which is open to us through a single humble act of confidence. I am not telling you you believe too much in your own wretchedness No, no, no, we are far more wretched than we ever realize but I am telling you you do not believe enough in Merciful love we must have confidence Not in spite of our miseries, but because of them since it is misery which attracts Mercy and we see this beautiful

Merciful heart incarnate upon the cross. So here is a meditation from Thomas Aquinas on the death of Christ. That Christ should die was expedient to make our redemption complete. For although any suffering of Christ had an infinite value because of its union with his divinity, it was not by no matter which of his sufferings that the redemption of mankind was made complete, but only by his death. So the Holy Spirit declared, speaking through the mouth of Caiaphas, it is expedient for you that one man shall die for the people. Whence St. Augustine says, let us stand in wonder, rejoice, be glad, love, praise and adore, since it is by the death of our Redeemer that we have been called from death to life, from

exile to our own land, from mourning to joy. To increase our faith, our hope and our charity. With regard to faith, the psalm says, As to the increase of hope, St. Paul writes, not even his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How hath he not also with him given us all things? God cannot deny this, for to give us all things is less than to give his own son to death for us. St. Bernard says, who is not carried away to hope and confidence in prayer when he looks on the crucifix and sees our Lord hanging there, the head bent as though to kiss, the arms outstretched in an embrace,

the hands pierced to give, the side open to love, the feet nailed to remain with us. Come, my dove, in the clefts of the rock we read in the Song of Songs. It is in the wounds of Christ the church builds its nest and waits, for it is in the passion of our Lord that she places her hope of salvation and thereby trusts to be protected from the craft of the Falcon, that is, of the devil. With regard to the increase of charity, Holy Scripture says, at noon he burneth the earth. That is to say, in the fervour of his passion, he burns up all mankind with his love. So St. Bernard says, the chalice thou didst drink, O good Jesus, maketh thee lovable above

all things. The work of our redemption easily brushing aside all hindrances calls out in return the whole of our love. This it is which more gently draws out our devotion, builds it up more straightly, guards it more closely, and fires it with greater ardor. You know, it's interesting doing these podcasts because I obviously can't see you.

I don't know your situation. I don't know where you're watching from. I was going on a walk today and I bumped into a fellow at the coffee shop and he turned around and his jaw dropped open and he says, I cannot believe I'm seeing you. I've been watching your podcast for a long time now and three years ago, my wife and I came into the Catholic Church. So I don't know if you're watching this as an unbeliever. I don't know if you're watching this as somebody steeped in sin, I don't know if you're somebody who has been pretty good at following religious observances, but you don't trust in the great love and affection Christ has for you. So why don't I close us in a prayer and invite Jesus into our hearts.

Jesus into our hearts. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Good Jesus, I thank you that you love us. Not in a general or obligatory sort of way, but that you know us because you are God. That you are aware of our anxieties. St. Peter tells us to cast all of them upon you and so we do. The anxieties we have for being broken, for having committed sins that we're deeply ashamed of.

The baggage that we hold that we can't seem to relinquish. Jesus right now, I just trust in you. I surrender it to you. I release it to you, Jesus. And I'm confident that you will do the good work in me. But I can move aside and release it to you and trust it to you, surrender it to you and and put my complete and utter confidence to you, entrust it to you, surrender it to you and put my

complete and utter confidence in you. Free me from my sin, restore my relationship with you, help me to fall in love with you and if I've never been moved by your love, Lord Jesus, give me the grace as I look upon the crucifix to say, Jesus, I accept your love for me, accept my love for you. Amen. Have a happy holy week. God bless.