A great sponge

Our Lord on the cross was very much like a great sponge that just wiped clean this earth and absorbed within himself all the sins of mankind, as if he himself was guilty. Dostoevsky, in the story of the underworld which told of his days of exile in Siberia, writes, '0 God, could you not let me be a sponge to plug up some dirty old hole.' Well, that was exactly what our Lord did for us. He was the great absorbent. That's where all our excuses ended. That's where our sins ended.