***Bonus song at the end of this homily from our Latin Mass choir***

When someone finally realizes the truth of how much they are loved by God, joy explodes. If God is willing to endure such lengths to bring us back into loving communion with him, it begs the question of our dignity.  The Father sends his son Jesus into the world to take on our frail human nature, be born into swaddling clothes, grow up in a little mountain, nothing town on the fringes of Palestine, ridiculed, spat upon, insulted, and finally tortured by being nailed to a barren tree as crowds mock and laugh at his unimaginable pain, then we can gain some truth into God’s immense love for us: “His death”, says St. Catherine of Siena, the famous medieval saint, “on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him.  This is love in its most radical form.”