Good Friday Celebration of the Passion of the Lord

Each year on Good Friday we read the Passion according to St. John.  As we contemplate the mystery of Jesus crucified, we are invited to realize the tragedy of Jesus’ suffering and death in the context of our own trials, sorrows, and deaths.  The types of things that Jesus endured during his Passion are endured today by men, women and children across the globe: persecution, torture, imprisonment and execution by the state.

Tragically, our own government is complicit in torture, in the dark cells of government-approved prisons.  Jesus was imprisoned, as over 1.5 million men and women in the United States are incarcerated, in proportions that far outstrip other developed nations.  And capital punishment, which a Vatican official in a speech before the United Nations recently declared to be against Catholic teaching, finds its more famous victim in Jesus Christ.  More generally, martyrdom and its attending horrors are not a thing of the past.  One needs only to look to the Middle East and to Nigeria and Kenya to witness the terrible persecution of Christian communities.

In so many ways, Christ continues to suffer in his body today.  Jesus’ cross is a message, a word for us, a sign of contradiction, a sign of victory.  As the cross is held high in our midst, in some strange and mysterious way, we look upon it and find strength and hope in the midst of our own struggles.  We embrace the cross and respond in faith to the message of life which flows from it, a message which brings us healing and reconciliation.

In John’s Passion story, Pontius Pilate presents Jesus to the people with the words: “Ecce Homo” – Behold the Man.  Behold the Man who lived for others, healing them, restoring them and loving them to life.  Behold the Man who had courage to choose women as disciples and close friends in his day.  Behold the Man who claimed to have a unique, personal relationship with the God of Israel whom he called “Abba.”  Behold the Man who came into the world as the sinless one, the just one, the holy one, and his fellow human beings killed him.

In the other gospels, Jesus is torn from the midst of his family, disciples and friends.  They don’t get a chance to see him again until he is raised from the dead.  But things are different in John’s gospel.  Jesus gets the chance to say good-by, at least to his mother and to one of his disciples, who are at the foot of his cross.  Before he dies on the cross, Jesus commits his beloved disciple to his mother’s care and his mother to that disciple’s care.  “Behold your son!  Behold your mother!”

Jesus turns us outward toward people to whom we are not physically related, identifying these people as our mothers, fathers, sisters or brothers.  Through his death, Jesus breaks down the barriers between people and creates a new family.  Even the bowing of his head at the moment of death is a nod in their direction.  Out of Jesus’ death comes life for his followers.  On Good Friday we gather together as the Christian community to “behold the man,” to embrace Jesus and to allow his cross to transfigure our lives.

Let us continue to mark ourselves daily with the sign of the cross, and be mindful of what we are truly doing and professing with this sign:

“In the name of the Father.”  We touch our minds because we know so little how to create a world of justice, peace and hope.

“In the name of the Son.”  We touch the center of our body to bring acceptance to the fears and pain stemming from our own passage through death to life.

“In the name of the Holy Spirit.”  We embrace our heart to remember that from the center of the Cross of Jesus, God’s vulnerable heart can bring healing and salvation to our own.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor