GOOD FRIDAY TRE ORE
MARCH 29, 2013
CATHEDRAL OF ST. JAMES, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
MOST REVEREND GORDON D. BENNETT, S. J.
The Cross Opens the Way to Life
Jesus did not invent the cross.
He, like every man,
Found it on his journey.
The newness in his message
Was to plant a seed of love
Into our bearing of the cross.
The element of love
Turned the Way of the Cross
Into a way that leads to life.
The Cross itself becomes
A message of love:
A means of our transformation.
Our cross is also the cross of Jesus.
From his cross Jesus
Invites us to do as he did:
Plant the seed of love and hope
In the soil of each of the crosses
We encounter.
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, S. J.
This afternoon, dear brothers and sisters, you and I are invited into a very special encounter with the Lord Jesus. This encounter asks us to try to go beyond seeing the events we remember today as simply a heartbreaking story which happened a long time ago, the outcome of which we are all too familiar. Our encounter today invites us to be with the suffering and dying Jesus in our imagination and to listen attentively to Him as He teaches us from the cross. Yes, he teaches us, not just by telling us in words, but by showing us in deeds. He takes the time “to plant in each of us seeds of love and of hope.” Through his suffering he to sheds light on our own human experience and teaches us how to bear the crosses you and I meet as we walk the path toward transformation of life toward true human freedom.
The first word is taken from the Gospel according to St. Luke (23:33-34)
“When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left. Then Jesus said: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”
The first lesson we learn from Jesus is about forgiveness. Let us imagine Him looking out from the cross. Let us imagine we can feel what he feels in his heart. He cannot help but feel incredible sadness because of the sense of triumph in the eyes of his enemies, the muted anger and despair of his loved ones, and because most of his disciples have left Him to the mercy of bullies. And yet, He doesn’t use this occasion to curse his oppressors or to blame his disciples, he begs His Father to forgive them.
What do his words and actions tell us about love and about hope? Jesus knows that only forgiveness will be able to stop the spiral of violence and hate, the incessant loop of injury, recrimination and revenge we see in the history of nations, in our personal relationships, and even within ourselves. Jesus knows that forgiving others takes away the enormous power that pain wields over us, that forgiving allows us to move from identifying ourselves as a victim to affirming ourselves as a survivor, that forgiveness, and forgiveness alone, allows us to become truly free. Jesus knows that not being able to forgive reduces us to the level of those who hurt us.
As we hear this lesson that comes to us from the cross, we cannot help but find ourselves eager to access the power of forgiveness in our own lives; and we can do so by asking three questions: From whom do we need to ask forgiveness for what we may have done to them? Whom do we need to forgive in our lives? What do we need to forgive ourselves for?
Let us take a moment of silence now and ponder our response to these questions.
Jesus, your cross gives me hope. I hear your words about forgiveness and cannot help but be moved by the urgency of your message to me. Help me to stop wasting time and energy on holding grudges, on blaming and hating. Help me, like you did, to experience the peace that enters my life when I practice forgiveness, asking for it when necessary and granting it to everyone without exception, even to myself.
The second word is taken from the Gospel according to Luke (23:39-42)
Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” The he said, “Jesus, remember when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
As we call up this scene in our imagination, we are sure to become aware of the anger and spitefulness of one of the thieves being crucified with Jesus. Here is a man who is full of bitterness and regret because he has wasted his life, and has now become acutely aware that he has brought upon himself consequences which, in his pride, he thought he would be able to escape. So he projects all his rage onto Jesus, demanding, as we so often do when we need to blame someone else, that Jesus will compensate for his foolishness and bad choices. “Save yourself and us,” he screams.
The other thief, however, realizes that he is now where his free choices have led him and, conscious now of his need for mercy, he affirms Jesus’ innocence and the monstrous injustice of the punishment, and then he humbly asks Jesus to remember him in the Kingdom Jesus came to earth to establish and is about to enter.
And Jesus rewards this man’s humility, this man’s honesty, this man’s faith, with the assurance that they will be united together in paradise on this very day. In this lovely scene, Jesus gives you and me the hope that there is nothing that we could ever do or say or become that would make God love us less and that, whenever we humbly accept our sinfulness for what it is, whenever we are able to acknowledge that it is we who have put distance between us and God, at that very moment, we receive God’s unconditional love. As our Holy Father Francis taught us just a few days ago: “God never gets tired of forgiving us; it is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”
Let us take a moment in silence to humbly admit our sinfulness and to ask Jesus, in his great mercy, to bring us into His Kingdom.
Jesus, I thank you for teaching me the lesson of humility. Although your mercy and acceptance are what I most long for, I find it so difficult to believe that you love me without condition and that my sins are forgiven because of your suffering and death on the cross. I find it hard to believe that you love me that much. Help me to realize and accept the fact that you do so that it can change my life and make me, like this thief, want nothing more than to be with you forever.
The third word is taken from the Gospel according to John (19:25-27)
Standing by the cross were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
As we focus our imagination on this scene, we notice that many of Jesus’ enemies have left Calvary Hill because their lust for blood has been satisfied, so we see that Jesus’ loved ones can now approach closer to him to let him know they’re there. He looks down and sees John, the one disciple who didn’t abandon him. He sees his mother, Mary, and two other women who are sharing this horrible experience. Jesus entrusts John to his mother and His mother to John. The lesson Jesus gives us here is one of true generosity: giving away everything we have.
Jesus’ whole life has been a life of giving away. He gave up His divinity in order to take on our humanity and he gave away his human life so He could reconcile us with the Father. At the Last Supper, he gave us his body and blood to be the nourishment we need to continue to have sacramental access to him in our daily lives. All his miracles and healings were ways of raising others to the dignity they had lost because of the effects of sin in their lives, and of helping others to see beyond this world and their own expectations to the enormous happiness God has planned for all of us. In his preaching, he has emphasized how important emptying oneself is in order to follow Jesus sincerely, how we all have to learn, in committing our lives to Him, the lesson of the grain of wheat which, only when it dies, reaps a rich harvest. And now, at his most vulnerable moment, he entrusts the two people he loves the most to each other for safe-keeping. He gives the disciple to the mother and he gives the mother to the disciple.
The generosity Jesus embodies is total. It is not like our generosity, which can sometimes be corrupted by stinginess, by self-interest, by procrastination, or by compromise; Jesus gives away everything he has.
Let us take a moment to think about how generous our own loving is.
Jesus, I thank you for teaching me about generosity, about wholehearted love. As you empty yourself of every status, every connection, and every relationship, you show me that love isn’t real until it is given away freely. Help me, Jesus, to avoid clinging to anyone or to anything except to you.
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The fourth word is taken from the Gospel according to Matthew (27: 45-46)
From noon onward, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabacthani?” which means “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
As we imagine this painful scene, we see and hear Jesus begin to recite the plaintive words which begin Psalm 22, a part of the Bible he had memorized and which had obviously given him great consolation throughout his life. The words we hear from His lips, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are a loud and long and heart-rending lament begging God for clarity and for rationality.
How can a God who is good allow these things to happen? What have I done to deserve this? How is it that I have fallen so far from your grace? Where are you in the midst of this pain, this loss, this addiction, this failure, this doubt?
These questions exactly mirror our own experience of suffering when we demand answers to the difficult moments we face in life. Why do we, especially the innocent, have to suffer? Why can’t you stop it? Why won’t you stop it?
Jesus leads us to the answer in the concluding verses of the psalm which are an affirmation of faith that the Lord never leaves us orphans but cares for us even as we experience disquiet and even despair. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and those who are crushed in spirit he saves” (Psalm 34:18)
The end of Psalm 22 says: “The Lord has not spurned nor disdained the wretched man in his misery. Nor did he turn his face away from him, but when he cried out, the Lord heard him.”
As it is for us, Jesus’ suffering is characterized by bewilderment, confusion, anger and even despair. But Jesus’ steadfastness and his patient endurance ultimately allowed him to give a resounding affirmation of God’s nearness and His mercy, to God’s providence and His compassion. Even in his deepest pain, Jesus teaches us that God never, never abandons us.
Let us take a moment in silence to reflect upon any suffering or pain we are presently enduring and, while feeling its power, let us make an act of faith in God’s Providence and in his nearness to us.
Jesus, I thank you for your example of faithfulness and of patient endurance. Hearing you admit your hurt and pain allows me to welcome my own hurt and pain. But hearing you and watching you trust your Father through it all is what gives me hope that my patient endurance will bring me comfort and that all my daily dyings will bring me resurrection.
The fifth word is taken from the Gospel according to John (19:28)
After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.”
We return to our imaginations, and see Jesus becoming more and more uncomfortable. Because he was already weak from the physical brutality he underwent the night before, and because it’s clear he’s already lost a lot of blood, he appears to be in great discomfort. He can’t seem to find any physical comfort at all, and it’s getting harder for him pull himself into a position in which he can breathe comfortably. And most of all, he’s dehydrated, making it difficult to swallow. So, almost in delirium, he says: “I thirst.”
It is entirely appropriate to interpret what he says literally, but when we recall other instances during Jesus’ public life, the term “thirst” takes on another meaning: his thirst is his ardent desire for souls, his wish that he might be able to bring everyone, without exception, into His Kingdom. For Jesus, our reconciliation with the Father is the purpose of His coming to share our humanity, to share our nature and our skin. His love for us aches inside him; he is hungry and thirsty for us. So many of Jesus’ parables were about God’s relentless search for the lost one, about God’s sense of restlessness and discomfort until everyone, all nations, have been gathered together with him. So, rather than expressing merely a physical need, maybe Jesus’ thirst here is another way of telling himself why he is doing what he is doing right now. He hangs on the cross because his whole being thirsts for you and for me.
At this moment on the cross, Jesus is inviting us to thirst for souls, to really and deeply want everyone to be in union with God. Jesus teaches us that, because we are his disciples, our baptism into his death and resurrection makes each of us a new creation, a living gospel. He shows us that each of us should consider ourselves sent into the world to preach God’s unconditional love, to call the world to a deeper integrity, to a more real justice. As St. Paul reminds us in his second letter to the Church at Corinth: “We are ambassadors for Christ.” And, like Christ Himself, we ourselves need to thirst for souls.
Let us take a moment to bring to mind those persons we know are resistant to Christ’s message of reconciliation with the Father. And let us pray that we may have the zeal within us to reach out to them to plant seeds of hope and love.
Jesus, I want to thirst for souls like you did. I want everyone to know God and the inexhaustible riches of His mercy. Help me to live my life each day in such a way that everyone I meet, family member, friend, stranger or enemy, may experience your goodness and compassion because they have met me.
The sixth word is taken from the Gospel of John (29-30)
There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.”
In our imaginations, we can see that even more people have now left Calvary Hill. They are slowly walking away from this extraordinary drama, going their different ways, oblivious to the monumental event which is about to change the history of humankind. On the cross, Jesus, weak and thoroughly exhausted by this horrific ordeal now announces the end of the alienation between man and God. And he declares a final end to the relentless rescue mission God has been on for all of us since Adam and Eve’s disobedience. So he says: “It is finished.”
The power of sin is finished, and you and I have been reconciled to God. There is no more condemnation for us because we are now in Christ; shame no more has a place in our relationship with God, for to have shame now makes a liar out of God. No more is there a record of our wrongs. Beating ourselves up for our sinfulness is pointless, finished.
Jesus has paid a debt he did not owe because you and I owe a debt we could never pay.
In Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are reborn, re-made, renewed and reconciled. Everything else is finished, over. What Jesus says at the Last Supper has now come to pass: “You are in me and I am in you….There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And you are my friends if you do what I command you: love one another as I have loved you.”
We are the undeserving recipients of a love that is like no other. The only appropriate response to such great love is gratitude, to get on our knees and thank God for making us new. The cross invites us into a gratitude that overflows into deeds of compassion and service of others, particularly of those most in need.
What Jesus declared finished on the cross, he declared finished for everybody. Everybody, everywhere, every tribe, every nation, every race, every faith, every people, every gender, every language. Everybody’s sins are nailed permanently there on the cross with Jesus.
Let us take a moment in silence to ask ourselves how we need to return the love Jesus has shown us by deeds of gratitude.
Jesus, I know through faith that your sacrifice has brought in a new era of history, one which restores me to the dignity I was intended to have as your beloved child. I ask you to keep that faith alive in me, so that the gratitude I need to have for your love will inspire me to render deeds of service of all others.
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The seventh word is taken from the Gospel of Luke (23:44-46)
It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” And when he had said this, he breathed his last.
Jesus can no longer breathe and He uses his last burst of energy to orient Himself and all of us toward the Father, and give His life and Himself over to the Father. Satan had once tempted Jesus to accept power and glory from the world, to be accepted and coddled by the world, to be an example of the world’s choices and values. He resisted that temptation then and now proclaims with utter faithfulness the most basic and the deepest of all human truth: we belong to God.
In this final surrender, Jesus is showing us how important it is that we choose to live out God’s vision for us rather than the world’s vision. For the world, the fact that we are loved and accepted and forgiven in spite of everything we have done is simply too good to be true. Jesus teaches us that we can either live out this hopeless vision of the world or we can live out of the vision that God, through the cross of Jesus, has reconciled us to Himself. We face this critical choice of how to view the world every single day of our lives.
Here is something we need to remind ourselves of every day: Heaven is full of forgiven sinners. Hell is full of forgiven sinners. Heaven is full of people God loves, people for whom Jesus died. Hell is full of people God loves, people for whom Jesus died.
The difference between heaven and hell is in how we choose to live today, this day, whether we surrender to the world or to the Father. When we choose to surrender to the Father, we are living as God made us to live. We are living on earth in the flow of how we will live forever. This is the life of heaven, right here and right now. And as we live this life in harmony with God’s vision for us, the life of heaven becomes more and more present to us. Heaven, the Kingdom of God, comes to earth. This is what makes sense out of Jesus’ teaching in the Our Father: “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Let us take a moment in silence to examine whether we, like Jesus, are placing ourselves in the Father’s hands or abandoning ourselves to the values of this passing world; and let us ask for the graces we need in order to enter God’s Kingdom even as we are here on earth.
Jesus, may all that is you flow into me. May your body and blood be my food and drink, may your passion and death be my strength and my life. Jesus, with you by my side, enough has been given. May the shelter I seek be the shadow of your cross. Let me not run from the love which you offer but hold me safe from the forces of evil. On each of my dyings, shed your life and your love. Keep calling to me until that day comes when, with your saints, I may praise you forever. Amen.
From his cross Jesus
Invites us to do what he did:
Plant the seed of love and hope
In the soil of each of the crosses
We encounter.
Amen!