Good Friday 2007

On Good Friday the Church is desolate, with an desolation expressed well by the beloved in the Song of Songs, “I sought Him whom my soul loves” or by Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Christ, “They have taken away my Lord.” The Church’s way of expressing her lamentation for that time when Jesus was seemingly conquered and removed from the company of men is the emptiness of the church’s decor and the bare bones manner in which she conducts herself today. This is an external sign of the shame of the human race in bringing about our Lord’s death and the shame felt by Jesus in having become the sport of those savage acts of cruelty which manifest the real hideousness of sin.

We know that our Lord was hanging on the cross for the exposed view of the onlookers for three hours’ time–the length of our liturgy–a mighty long time for a human body to be crippled in the pains of crucifixion. All that time, Jesus was redeeming mankind, atoning for men’s sins, experiencing ‘Passion’, which is to say suffering, like a bold warrior receiving blows in the thick of conflict of smiting the devil.

It was not a fresh and vigorous human body that was on the cross, but one whose flesh been severely weakened by multiple attacks and bruises upon it. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the world’s greatest shame. I insist that it is absolutely essential for everyone to appreciate the absolute ignominy, disgust, horror and the despicably wicked thing it is to drive nails through a living human body, to torture it to the point that its victim is consumed and finally overcome by the trauma. The words barbaric, sadistic, satanic, are inadequate to identify this most thorough manner of afflicting every sensitive channel of pain in a human body. I repeat the word shame–a word now seldom used in polite company (‘shame on you’ is an expression of reproach seldom heard anymore). The crucifixion of Jesus was a shame in a twofold sense: it was the shame of inhumanity for the evil genius and rapacious cruelty of men who invented and practiced it; it was also the most shameful experience for its Victim to have been reduced to utter degradation, humiliation, ridicule and helplessness, even though in this case this was willfully accepted.

I wish to speak today about the double-faced shame of Good Friday because shame’s opposite, pride, is our principal source of trouble, especially when we have made in our own day a virtue of the vices of vainglory, self-esteem and lewd behavior.

The shame exhibited on the cross for all the world to marvel at was already evident in the events prior to the crucifixion, notably in Jesus’ trial before Caiphas, and in His crowning with thorns. I’d like to review what our Lord experienced in these events of the Passion because they reveal more fully the interior anguish of Jesus which was surely even more cruelly sensitive to Him than the wounds and strikes to his body.

There is a painter, a 15th century master, who is not only a superb artist but a man whom the Church has proclaimed ‘blessed.’ This is the renowned Fra Angelico. Among his works is a painting that I have admired and often meditated upon. It is a depiction of the mockery of Christ during the Passion, a scene in which Christ is shown bound, blindfolded, and holding a reed in His hand. On His right there is the disembodied head of a man who spews his spittle at Jesus in such a way as to show all the vile delight his act was meant to convey. It was an act of calculated degradation of the Holy Face of Jesus and thus an affront to God Himself. Saint Paul was the one who explained for us that the image of the invisible God is found in the sacred humanity of Jesus; that His physical self is an icon, a true representation, of divinity in human visibility. Paul found particularly in the face of Jesus the glory of God shining forth, a glory that was uncovered for viewing only once, for the brief moment of the Transfiguration. If spitting in one’s face is the ultimate expression of contempt for a person, its use against Jesus demonstrated the perverse intention to cause the sacrilegious defilement of His sacred Person. The reflexive response to such an affront if it were done against ourselves would be some act of retaliation in word or deed to recover our dignity. For Jesus, however, it is something received as if it were a just deed, accepted with a patience and a meekness that is a marvel of divine condescension. My own reaction in looking at this man in the painting is to want to intercept the flow of venom from his mouth and to shield the Sacred Face. But Christ wished to accept the shame of that act that was rightly due not to Christ but to us for the shamelessness of our sins. Our Lord bore there in silence what was our due, heroically and patiently, because all the proud defiance of our sins had to be given expression in the Passion. The self-assertion, the self-will, the self-seeking of sin found its counterweight in Jesus’ self-effacement, obedience and indignity. It’s because we have had no shame that Jesus accepted shame for us, teaching us that sin is an affront to God.

Spitting in His face was the first outrage offered to Jesus. While it summed up and symbolized all the potentiality of contempt for Him, it was also joined to other acts of insolence and cruelty by the soldiers. Isaiah had predicted this centuries before when he wrote: “I gave my back to those who beat me, my checks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting” (Is 50). The disrobing of His body, the mock investiture and the crowning with thorns added to the blasphemy and shame by which Jesus was exposed, dishonored, and treated as a fool. There is no more difficult thing than to endure what we call in the Spiritual Works of Mercy bearing wrongs patiently. To bear slanderous accusations in silence and with patience is the ultimate test of virtue. In Jesus, this forbearance should make us realize how we have so often tested the patience of God. Crowning Jesus with thorns giving Him a reed for a scepter were the attempts of ridicule and belittlement that heightened the irony of the one who claimed to be a king of another realm. Here was God in the form of human servant, as a man held captive, as the plaything of men. The crowning with thorns underscored the depth of weakness Jesus assumed. This was God’s way of compensating by means of opposites, of contradictions, the ways of our sins, in our desire for recognition, admiration, compliments and human praise.

There’s another point to be made about the intentionally degrading acts inflicted upon our Lord in the Passion. It is said that the holy Angels shield their metaphorical eyes before God. And yet, in the Passion, our Lord was looked upon in contempt. According to mystics who have been given knowledge of various details of the Passion, our Lord’s modesty would also have been attacked were it not for a special intervention. Even so, Jesus felt the sense of utter helplessness which was the effect of His ungarmented flesh. I make this point because of all the forms of indecency in our time and the utter boldness, brashness, with which men and women frequently debase themselves. Ours is perhaps a time of unprecedented carnality in the Christian era. Shamelessness has gripped the souls and imaginations of so many, even our children. How many souls will be eternally lost on this account can’t be estimated. But it is certainly appropriate to warn people on this day when Jesus suffered in the flesh so that men might be saved from the corruption of the flesh, to shun the proposals to impurity which are so aggressively thrust upon us. Our devotion to Jesus crucified today is both a gesture of reparation for these sins and a plea to the Divine Mercy to bring sinners back to that rightful sense of shame that we call modesty.

Everyone all ought to take Good Friday in a personal way, as if what our Lord suffered there was meant just for himself. This is not only because the Son of God’s love is a person-to-person kind of love (rather than generic), but also because the sins that necessitated His Passion are personal. Everyone has become his own expert in sin, having gained a certain competence, if not mastery, in offending God and affronting His divine majesty. Today’s liturgy is a communal act both of contrition and love to the only One who could remedy our sinfulness.

I have used for my Good Friday topic this year the subject of shame as something fitting for our reflection. If we do not recognize the shame that Jesus was made to feel in the Passion and crucifixion and the shame which is ours for causing it, then we will never quite get the shock of Saint Paul’s statement that the cross of Christ is our boast and cause of our glory. That Christ should have consented to this disgrace and shame for our redemption is the ultimate realization of God’s fidelity and love for us unmindful and ungrateful sinners.

The exaltation of Easter will spring out of the tomb of a shameful Passion and a shameless humanity which brought it about. Let us spend this day with our Lord to express freely and openly our regrets and our love, and to make the pledge of our loyalty to Him. Far from the shame and dishonor, may there be to Jesus all glory, and honor and kingship now, forever and ever!