{"id":7582,"date":"2004-04-01T10:30:34","date_gmt":"2004-04-01T10:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/why_did_jesus_die.html"},"modified":"2004-04-01T10:30:34","modified_gmt":"2004-04-01T10:30:34","slug":"why_did_jesus_die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/why_did_jesus_die.html","title":{"rendered":"Why did Jesus Die?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cardinal George explores the question<\/a><\/p>\n

We pray these Lenten days for those to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. In the early years of the Church, it seems that those being baptized turned west, toward the setting sun and the place of gathering darkness, and there repudiated Satan and all his works. Then they turned east, toward the place of the rising sun, professed their faith and saluted Jesus Christ as Lord, like soldiers abandoning a tyrant\u2019s army for that of a liberator. The obedience of faith is central to the life of a disciple of Christ, who became Lord in obeying the Father, even unto death on the cross (Good Friday liturgy). To obey Christ is to become like him who obeyed. To disobey Christ is to betray the Lord who gives us life as his disciples.<\/p>\n

These Lenten days are given us in order to free us from the slavery of sin, to repent our betrayals, to renew our allegiance to Christ and make reparation for the damage done by our wrongdoing. This process of conversion, which should lead us to the confessional, begins with the acknowledgement that we have betrayed the Lord. Judas could not face his betrayal; Peter did so with enormous anguish of heart. That anguish is ours when we face our own sins; it is ours as well when we face the sins of others in the Church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cardinal George explores the question We pray these Lenten days for those to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. In the early years of the Church, it seems that those being baptized turned west, toward the setting sun and the place of gathering darkness, and there repudiated Satan and all his works. Then they turned…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy did Jesus Die? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/why_did_jesus_die.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why did Jesus Die? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cardinal George explores the question We pray these Lenten days for those to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}