Good Friday 2003
In our parish church when I
was a child, we learned a song about the passion of Christ that moved me a
great deal. I still think of it often, especially during Lent. Were it not for
the fact that the melody is too sentimental and of little aesthetic value, I
would probably reproduce it for the singing of our Grotto people. Come to think
of it, even the text is no great piece of poetry. And yet, strange to say,
sometimes such little, insignificant, almost worthless things can take on great
personal meaning, as, for example a holy picture of little artistic merit yet
richly capable of stirring pious sentiments in one’s soul. I open today's
sermon with the first stanza of this hymn from my youth.
Christ,
in thy sorrows let me have a share,
Mine,
Lord, should be the crown that thou didst wear.
Why
faint in weakness 'neath that cross of thine?
Dear
Lord, the weight and shame should all be mine.
On Good Friday we do not celebrate
holy Mass, even though, from a certain point of view, there seems to be no more
appropriate time to celebrate the Lord's sacrifice. The Church, however, is in
mourning, commemorating the desolation and agony of the Lord. And yet, this is
a celebration of a ‘liturgy’ meaning that members of the Church are being
affected by participating in the action of this holy day. In what sense does
this occur?
We know with certainty that
Christ does not die again, neither on the annual Good Friday, nor during the
sacrifice of the
The meaning of a liturgy is
not that we merely recall something from the past, but that we, through
performing it, are drawn into the very thing being celebrated.
Specifically, regarding Good Friday, we are being engaged in a re-living of the
passion with Christ through the solemn singing of the passion Gospel, in the
veneration of the cross, and in receiving holy
Communion. This is our manner of participating in His sacrifice. To get the
idea, imagine for a moment the whole church emptied of all the people around
you and you left alone here with the Lord today: it would then perhaps be more
evident that you and the Lord would be spiritually bonded: He on the cross, you
in spirit with Him on the cross. And so it is that we are mere bystanders,
observers of a play, but co-agents with Christ who is being sacrificed. That we
do this in spirit, rather than through bodily death is obvious. But our manner
of participation should resemble that of the Blessed Mother standing under the
cross, standing not solely as a witness but as a co-sufferer when her sorrowful
heart was being pierced by the sword.
There ought indeed to be many
‘deaths’ that occur on Good Friday. Everyone here should have an experience of
it. The dying of the Christian in union with Christ has the sense of a dying to
that “self” which seeks to make more of itself than it
is, in becoming self-sufficient. We know well this sense of the self because it
has been the cause of all our sins. On Good Friday, more than at any other
time, we should be the more conscious that we need to crucify this sense of the
self and take its very life, so that, in the end, there will be Jesus only. I
return to the hymn text of my childhood.
“Mine,
Lord, should be the crown that thou didst wear;
the
weight and shame should all be mine.”
Isn’t it this that draws us
with such fervor on Good Friday to the Lord's cross? In a certain sense, is it
not because sin has wounded us and caused us such sorrow, emptiness and
bitterness, that we can sense the rightness of the crucifixion: that it
required the death of Jesus to atone for the enormity of evil that we have done
and experienced by sinning? Our wounds, caused by sin, call upon his sacred
wounds: deep injury calling upon the depths of divine mercy. Perhaps we might
even go so far as to say that our sins have had this one advantage: they have
disposed us to a greater desire for Christ’s healing love. We cannot forget the
words of Jesus concerning a great sinner who converted: she was forgiven much,
He said, because she loved much.
Good Friday is so personal
that, from one point of view, we might almost wish to be alone with Christ this
day so that we could express to Him in words not for the hearing of anyone else
the depth of our compassion, our remorse for our sins, and our personal love.
But since there is a real solidarity among us through sin, there ought to be a
public, liturgical, corporate expression of these noble sentiments, even
though, in public, we cannot express them in quite the same manner. The success
of Good Friday much depends on what is in our mind, what is in our souls this
day. Only the Lord will be able to read what is in us when we come to kiss the
cross. There will not likely be much in the way of a public display of emotion;
and this is right. Religious emotions can be the most deceptive of all
emotions. “Rend your hearts, not your garments” was the exhortation we heard on
Ash Wednesday. God wants our loyalty, not our words; our amendment of life, not
tears; our fidelity in the faith and in the practice of virtue and not the
devotion that passes like the morning dew.
Christ, in thy sorrows, let me have a share,
Mine, Lord should be the crown that thou didst wear.
Why faint in weakness 'neath
that cross of thine?
Dear, Lord, the weight and shame should all be mine.
Taking up the cross on Good
Friday can have a very specific meaning, that of a co-crucifixion with Christ.
The punishment that was meted out to Jesus is truly what we deserved.
Yet since He has already suffered physically in our stead, let us not deny Him
that humble and contrite spirit, that heart that becomes one with His through
compassion.
May Mary, the Mother of Sorrows, help us to be one with her and her Son at the foot of the cross!