It is tempting always to think, and I think especially so for parents, that the greatest blessings God gives are the easily-recognised ones of health, wealth, and what is generally understood to be the successful life, the life of the person who has, as the saying goes, “made good”.

Certainly these blessings are real enough. Such blessings all fathers and mothers want for their children. A good parent will want such blessings for his children so much that he will be prepared to sacrifice some of his own enjoyment of these very sorts of blessings in order to provide the possibility of those benefits to his children.

But we should pause to ask ourselves if these sorts of blessings are all that we desire for our children. Some of us can now ask ourselves, What would a good grandparent want?

Do I merely want my own grown child to make good with health, wealth and success, or do I want my grown child to have the further blessing of character to be prepared to make sacrifices for his own children? In fact I could prefer him (or her) to sacrifice health and wealth if by so doing he brought good to others.

It is possible to be troubled by the thought that the will of the heavenly Father was that His Son should suffer and die. I have even heard it expressed that if God wanted His Son to suffer and die, then God would have to be guilty of child-abuse. However, the illustration I have just given might help us to understand that the heavenly Father’s love for His Son can be so much greater than the love of the father who only wants for his son that he should make good.

Indeed the heavenly Father wanted for His Son the supreme blessing of giving Himself so that others could be made good: as in the hymn-writer’s simple words, “He died to make us good.” It appears that there was no greater blessedness to confer upon someone but that his dying might be for such a purpose. Such an  understanding of blessedness, of course, turns the world’s understanding of it, by which we are so greatly influenced, on its head.

This understanding of blessedness is more like Jesus’ declaration of blessedness in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn, Blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and so on. Of course, such expressions are a huge challenge for us. We are greatly tempted not to want blessings at all like these for our own children, in spite of the fact that God has shown us that here is the greater blessedness!

Through the ugly manoeuvering of religious leaders and the tactless misgovernment of a second-rate state official, Pontius Pilate, the world judged Jesus, and in so doing was itself judged by an uncorrupted truth. When we of Christ’s body are in bondage to the world’s judgments about what is most blessed, we also are judged and found hopelessly deficient.

So when Jesus approaches the hour of His confrontation He says “Now is the judgement of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out, and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” The reality of the blessings of health and success are undeniable, but Lent and Passiontide remind us of that deeper dimension of blessedness that we, called to be the younger brothers and sisters of our Lord, are often too eager to ignore. It is that deeper dimension of blessedness that we begin to be drawn to in understanding and sympathy, when Jesus, lifted up from the earth, draws us to Himself.

Now the Passion of Jesus would be no blessed thing at all if it did not accomplish what it was undertaken for. Hebrews 5: 8-9 tells us that the Son learned obedience through what He suffered, and being made perfect He became the source of salvation to all who obey Him. Theologians of the Christian Era have gone to great lengths to try to explain how the Passion of Christ was effective in its redemptive intent. St. Paul describes this change in terms of our dying with Christ and rising again with Him.

The blessed and effective Passion of Jesus is itself both the Feast to which we are invited and the Cup that those who are drawn to the lifted up Jesus are called to share, that further dimension of blessedness known only to the beloved ones in Christ. May you and I share such blessedness, even for the sake of the effectiveness of Christ’s Passion in changing our own place and our own time.

For commentary, information and devotional material see www.churchofenglandcayman.com and www.anglicansatprayer.org