This is the movement of the Holy Family.

Welcome to our daily rosary meditation.

Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Why was it God's will that Christ should suffer and die?

There's no way of getting around it.

It was God's plan that Jesus Christ should suffer and die

for our sins. Isaiah tells us, the Lord was pleased to crush him in his infirmity. And Jesus told the

apostles over and over that he had to suffer, die, and rise on the third day.

Maybe we've gotten so used to this aspect of Christianity that we forgot how strange it is.

Why didn't God simply forgive us?

Why did he have to suffer and die?

Because he respected and loved us so much. Respect means to

acknowledge a person's excellence and to be unwilling to diminish that excellence in any way.

And the greatest human excellence is our freedom, our freedom to choose, to determine our own character, to determine our eternal destiny.

And to be free, the consequences of our choices have to matter, and that includes the consequences of our bad decisions, the consequences of our sin.

Imagine playing chess with someone who is much better than you are. If every time you make a bad

move, your opponent tells you to take it back. Well, are you really playing the game? No, he's just playing himself,

and he's not respecting your freedom because he won't let you make the move you want and take

the consequences. Respect for a free person means letting that person take responsibility for their decisions,

and that means deal with the consequences, good or bad.

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