HOLY WEEK 2000 - HIS JOURNEY AND OURS
Preacher: Father Bill Edebohls SSC
GOOD FRIDAY
"No greater love has a man than he lay down his life for his friends".
In the death of Christ, God made man, born of Blessed Mary, the one the angel named Jesus, God's love for us is demonstrated and proclaimed with a power and intensity that will always overwhelm the humble and believing heart.
There is great suffering in the world, and death is the common destiny of every individual. By his own accepting, participation and sharing in suffering and death, Our Lord has given suffering and death their own dignity. When I suffer, I am with Our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane or carrying that heavy load on the road to Calvary. When I die, what happens to me is what he endured. It is the same death and that will be my consolation one day.
It was man's sin that made Our Lord suffer and our sin which nailed him to the tree of death. In a vivid and frightening way, we see in the passion, in the suffering of Our Lord, what it means to reject God wilfully and deliberately; we glimpse in the crucifix something of the horror of sin and the wonder of God's love. Mankind has sinned, turned away from God, and in so doing has created a world in its own image and likeness. It became a world of pride, hatred and aggression; man became the prey of man.
The fact and effect of sin in the world needs little proving. If humanity is inherently good and is in no need of outside help why do all the wars to end all war never end wars? Why, in an age when we can fly to the moon, crack our own genetic codes, and manufacture life in a test-tube can we not control ourselves? Cannot make right choices?
It is our state of original sin - that breakdown of internal peace and harmony where our passions fight each other. Passions fight against the will. Will starts to fight with reason. Body and spirit are at each others throat. Symbolised in scripture With Adam and Eve's shame at nakedness, tiredness at manual labour, and pain in childbirth.
That breakdown of peace and harmony between people where human companionship becomes painful and uncertain. Symbolised in scripture by the his fault - her fault of Adam and Eve and the fight to the death of their children, Cain and Abel.
That breakdown of relationship between persons and nature where the fall takes on even an environmental and ecological element. Symbolised in scripture by Adam and Eve being thrown out of the garden into an uncooperative wilderness.
That breakdown of peace, harmony and communion between persons and God. Symbolised in scripture by Adam and Eve hiding from God.
To all this the liberal temper of the day scoffs, spurning the doctrine of original sin as mediaeval breast beating. In return they offer no solutions or clues, only cosmetics. Ineffective moralising of the 'be kind to granny and don't kick the cat' type changes nothing.
Mercifully, Scripture is far more realistic than we are. It does not allow us to slip into some supposed moral or spiritual neutral for a while. When Joshua called the people of God to commitment he did not present them with a range of options, possibilities, and an opt out clause. He gave them two clear choices: They could commit their lives in service to the One True God or to another lord.
This is just part of the Bible's realism: you have to serve somebody. The rejection of God's rule means another ruling in His place and rebellion. Opting out, never makes you non-aligned but in opposition to Him. That is how it has been since the beginning, and that is were all the fractured relationships have their root. In seeking to displace God, all other relationships have come undone.
All this is, of course, what makes Good Friday good. Overshadowing the whole Christian story is the cross. Not the defeat of the cross - but the victory of the cross. Even after Easter and the celebration of the resurrection it is still the Crucifix that dominates the church and we still preach a Christ crucified. What in particular marks it out?
First the cross is the place of forgiveness. As rebels and renegades, justice demands our punishment, but on the cross the debt was paid in full on our behalf by a crucified God.
Second the cross is the place of reconciliation. From the cross God makes the first move, he holds out his arms to a broken world offering friendship and reconciling the world to himself.
Third the cross is the place of wholeness. Not only are we restored to full humanity, which can only be achieved in relationship with God; but also the whole cosmos will be restored because of Christ's work.
Fourth, the cross is the place of finality. Jesus lived the perfectly obedient life we were meant to but cannot, and suffered what we deserved so that we need not. Written across history are his words: 'Consummatum est' - 'It is finished'.
A new world, new people, new relationship with God and each other: all of these are possible because of the cross: because of three o'clock one Friday afternoon.
The love and healing of God came into our world in the person of Jesus Christ and was rejected. Darkness and evil struggled with light and goodness. Christ remained constant in love and accepted the will of his Father to the bitter end. On Calvary the power of this world seemed to have triumphed, but in defeat there was victory, in death there was life. To this day, the struggle continues. In our pain and suffering and striving Christ dies yet lives.
We pray, on Good Friday, for all humanity. Christ died for all; each is precious to him. That is why the whole Christian community is concerned for all and prays for them in the great intercession of today's liturgy.
After those intercessions, we come to the altar to venerate the Cross. It is a very personal and individual action. In our ancient liturgies it was called "creeping to the Cross"; as the faithful would creep up the aisle on their knees finally to reach the Cross and kiss it. And while such devotion has suffered from the sterile and puritanical modern iconoclasm that would attack such emotive and demonstrative piety of a bygone generation, I like the expression. As we leave our seats, and move forward to the Cross for veneration, each of us carries quietly and silently his or her own burden, a private sorrow, a secret pain, a personal grief.
For those who were here at the Mass of the Lord's Supper, last night, where we talked of pilgrimage and gathering up our lives for these great days of the Triduum Sacrum, here, today, we take those lives in all their battle scarred glory, to Calvary, to the foot of the cross. And here we leave them. We bury then in the sacred heart of Jesus. Last night he washed our feet. Today he washes us in his own blood.
We creep with our own personal load to the Cross. It is very much like going to confession. We bundle up our pain, sorrow and sins, and with it we creep up the hill of Calvary and dump it at the foot of the Cross.
Only there can we safely leave it behind and descend back to the plain. We creep with our load to the Cross. The simple gesture of kissing the wounds of Christ helps to heal the wounds we carry within ourselves.
To share suffering with another can sometimes, but not always, lighten the burden. To share it with Our Lord is altogether different. It is a moment of grace. It never fails.
And when we venerate the Cross we think too of those who are themselves nailed upon it every day by the cruelty and callousness of their fellow men, and think of Christ suffering again in them: the victims of war in Chechnya and Sierra Leone, the starving and destitute, the sick, the mentally ill, the handicapped, the prisoners of conscience, the victims of racism and apartheid, the stolen generation, the refugees of Kosava that our government has so callously abandoned to their fate, the rejects and outcasts of our own mad society, the victims of our own tongues, temper and intolerance.
In our worship of Christ crucified, and in our sharing of the sacrament of his body, we shall leave our place in the crowd around, and share the cross as did Simon of Cyrene, or the Mother of Sorrows herself. We shall be crucified with Christ.
And in that crucifixion, in so looking at the Cross and the tortured figure, there nailed, we glimpse beyond, and we can see dimly outlined, with the eyes of faith, the face of the risen Christ.
