See, Mother, I make all things new!

He has many critics, as a man and a moviemaker, but in his movie “The Passion of the Christ” (2004) Mel Gibson reset a line of Scripture, and, in that act of artistry, revealed the deepest of truths. Here’s the scene. Mary sees her son Jesus fall under the weight of his cross. She remembers running to her child when he fell. Despite the crowd and his captors, she races to her adult son. Raising his bloodied face from the earth, she offers the greatest of comfort, though it is only the words, “I am here.”

Jesus sees her, and Mr. Gibson moves a line from the Book of Revelation to this encounter. Panting, Christ responds, “See, Mother, I make all things new.” That’s nothing less than inspired. Why?

Because what we call the Way of the Cross is Christ striding through time, Christ aging in the course of a few hours, Christ trampling toward death, making his way to the farthest reach of human sorrow, of our estrangement from God. If the old world, the one in which you and I were born, was one of sin, of alienation, of aging and of death, Christ walks the way of the cross so as to claim it back for God.

Behold I make all things new (Rev 21: 5).

In the mystery of his Incarnation, God the Son comes to die. God takes all that is ugly and old and rotten in this world and draws it into his self. Here death dies. Here the old gives way to the new. Here hope is reborn. This is why St. John brilliantly records Christ speaking of his passion as his hour of glory.

Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him (Jn 13:31).

With equal artistry and genius, Pope St. Leo the Great bespoke the deepest meaning of the Mass, of liturgy, when he wrote, “Quod itaque Redemptoris nostri conspicuum fuit, in sacramenta transivit” (Tr. LXXIV, 2). “And so what our redeemer made evident (in his presence among us) has passed over into the sacraments.”

In the Mass, the world is young again. In the liturgy, the Word bespeaks a freshness that does not age. In the Eucharist, bread and wine, given to us centuries long past, become food for the morrow. In his body and his blood, like a woman giving birth, Christ makes all things new.

Acts 14: 21-27 Revelation 21: 1-5a John 13: 31-33a, 34-35

https://www.americamagazine.org/content/good-word/i-make-all-things-new