GOOD FRIDAY
3 APRIL 2015
During the proclamation of the Passion, we kept
asking a rhetorical question in song:
“Where you there? Were you there
when they turned away from him? Were you
there when they led him away? Were you
there when they crucified my Lord?” At
one basic level, the answer is “no, none of us were there over two thousand
years ago in Jerusalem.” Had we been
there, we would have understood how horrible the cross was. It was a symbol of Roman cruelty. To everyone under Roman dominion, the cross
came to say, “If you cross us, we will cross you.” The Romans ruled through intimidation and
threat. They did this to maintain the
upper hand. They imposed their
intimidation and threat before someone did it to them. They saw no other way of living. The powers of sin and death shadowed them
everywhere.
The cross as a symbol goes beyond
Roman domination and control. It is also
a powerful symbol of all that is wrong with humanity. We fallen humans tend to cross those who
cross us. When someone gets in our way
or when we feel slighted, our instincts tell us to strike back, to harm, and to
humiliate those with whom we are angry. Our
instincts tell us to grab the upper hand, before someone else beats us to
it. Even when we have honest disagreements,
we cross those who disagree with us and create greater anger, pain, and
division.
Jesus Christ has taken that cross
and turned it into a very hopeful and life saving symbol. Instead of using his power as the Son of God
to gain the upper hand with those who betrayed, judged, and condemned him to
death, he uses the cross to do battle with all that is wrong with
humanity. The Passion according to Saint
John helps us to understand how he turned the cross into a symbol of self
sacrificing love.
Instead of harboring resentment and
anger at a friend who betrays him, Jesus accepts the hurtful kiss and accepts
it as the beginning of his role as God’s Suffering Servant. He faces the hostility of the Sanhedrin to clarify
his true identity as God’s Son. He
endures the denial of Peter so he can forgive him later. He turns his trial before the Roman governor
into a discussion of what truth means. As
the priests are preparing the sacrificial lambs for the Passover, Jesus becomes
the Lamb of God whose sacrifice enables us to pass from death to life. Instead of focusing on his own agony on the
cross, Jesus establishes a relationship between his mother and the beloved
disciple, making sure that we, his beloved disciples, understand that his
mother is also our mother. After his
death, water and blood flow from his side, so that his total gift of self will
pass through the life of the Church in the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy
Eucharist.
Artists through the centuries have portrayed
the final scene of the crucifixion with the Mother of God holding the dead body
of her Son in her arms. We are most
familiar with Michelangelo's Pieta in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. In the fifteenth century, the Spanish
painter, Fernando Gallego, painted his own version of the Pieta. If you have gone to Confession in the past
few weeks, you more than likely received a copy of this painting as a
penance. In the image, Mary holds the
body of her Son under the cross. In the
background is the city of Jerusalem.
Gallego did not research historical records to understand what Jerusalem
looked like at the time of Christ.
Instead, he painted the outline of his own city. In an artistic way, he is declaring that he
was there when they crucified his Lord.
That saving event, which happened only one time in history, is present
in his life, in his time, and in his place.
It
is in this sense that we are there, when they crucified our Lord. What happened on Good Friday took place only
once in history. But, the power of that
sacrifice continues today, in our lives, in our time, and in our place. We come forward to venerate the cross today
as a sign of its power to save us. In
briefly touching it, or kissing it, or bowing before it, we acknowledge our
faith that the cross of Christ has become a powerful symbol of Christ's self
sacrificing love, a love that has conquered sin, hatred, revenge and
death. By venerating the cross, we
reaffirm our efforts to respond to hurt with the same sacrificial, merciful,
and courageous love. By venerating the
cross, we renew our intentions to embrace those crosses in our lives over which
we have no control. It is the cross of
Christ which saves us. It is the cross
that allows us to refer to this Friday as "Good."
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