Good Friday

In today’s liturgy we re-live and experience the suffering and death of Jesus who brought us salvation.  We followed Jesus on the way of the cross and witnessed the tragic moments of his life. We realized how Jesus identified himself with all human experiences including suffering and death. He did not spare himself from the mental agonies of a person who cries out at the moment of rejection and alienation.

The passion of Jesus must have shocked us to see how wretched and ugly human life can be at its lowest level. Prophet Isaiah graphically presents the picture of the man of sorrows in the hymn of the Suffering Servant (Is 52-53). The Suffering Servant can be nobody but the suffering Jesus in all details.  Seeing his wounded, deformed face people looked away from him. He was despised and rejected by all. And the Prophet reminds us: he was carrying our sorrows. He was punished for our sins. He was wounded for our transgressions. He bore everything for our sake silently without even opening his mouth. Let us not forget: it is by his wounds that we were healed.

It may perhaps sound strange that the day on which Jesus suffered crucifixion is commemorated as “Good Friday”. If it is a “good” day, it must be also a “beautiful” day, because goodness and beauty go hand in hand. In some languages other than English “Good Friday” is known as “Sorrowful Friday,” emphasizing the tragic aspect of the day. How can a tragic and sorrowful day be at the same time a good and beautiful day? It can be explained only by showing the paradoxical nature of this particular day.

A paradox has two contrasting faces. It is one and same reality with two different experiences. Both these experiences are true and they cannot be separated from each other like the two sides of a coin.

The Friday which is crucial to our salvation has two faces: one looking backward and the other looking forward. One looks at the suffering and humiliation of death and the other looks at the joy and glorification of resurrection. Both these aspects together constitute the Pascal Mystery. In order to understand this mystery in its full depth, height and breadth the Church celebrates it in three days of the Pascal “Triduum” (Thee Days).

The Pascal mystery is unfolded as a “passage” from death to resurrection, beginning in the evening of the Holy Thursday and ending in the evening of the Easter Sunday. On “Good Friday” we are the crucial moment of our Pascal experience, at the peak of an awareness, where death and life meet and part at the same moment. It is like the midnight which marks, on the one hand, the end of the night and, on the other, the beginning of the dawn. It is at this moment that the fullest meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ is revealed.

The cross is that unique sign which can give us a glimpse into the meaning of the Pascal mystery. Only cross can demonstrate to us how the contrasting moments of death and resurrection, humiliation and glory are reconciled in one single experience.

The cross of Christ enables us to see suffering and death and all our struggles of day to day life in the light of resurrection. It enlightens the darkness surrounding us with the light of hope. It reminds us that we are the inheritors of the kingdom of God, even though we are still on the pilgrimage towards our final goal.

Applying the meaning of the cross into our daily life Pope John Paul II has once said that our life on earth is in the process of a continuous transformation as an artwork in the hands of the artist. He said that Christian life is creative life in which every Christian is to be turned to an artwork.

In the creation of an artwork the artist works with materials like marble, wood or paints. The artist seeks to attain the final image in the formless materials by working on them and transforming them according to the given design. In the case human life, the raw and hard experiences of day to day life, the struggles and problems, sins and failures are the materials to be transformed. The design to be realized in these life-materials is the image of Christ. The cross is the way or the method we have to adopt in sculpting our lives into beautiful artworks.

Those who do not understand the meaning of the cross may consider us as fools and despise our actions as senseless. Here we can remember the words of St. Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians: the cross is a sign of foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the sign of God’s power and wisdom for those who are saved (cf. 1 Cor 1:18ff).

As Christians we are motivated by the vision of the hidden image of Christ in all our human experiences and we proceed to realize it, like an artist with an imaginative mind. The artist can see the possibility of a beautiful image even in a rugged marble piece.

For us believers the cross is also the symbol of the infinite love of God for humanity. St. Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians about this all embracing love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. He wishes that we may have the power to comprehend the breadth, height and depth of this love which surpasses our comprehension (Eph 3:18). The cross of Christ is the symbol of God’s love which is extended in all cosmic directions, without excluding anybody or anything from its embrace.

In the Christian tradition the cross is known as the Tree of Life. As the symbol of resurrection and life, it is not a static object but a dynamic experience. To carry the cross means to move with Christ, following him in discipleship and to share his destiny. Jesus has explicitly said: if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me (Mk 8:34).

Pope Francis has emphasized in his first sermon in Vatican on 14 March the nature of Christian faith as a movement. He said, we have to move with the cross in following Jesus: “When we journey without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we confess a Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord: we are worldly, we are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord.”

In the cross we find salvation, life and hope. The fruit of the cross is eternal life. Let this Good Friday imprint in our hearts the sign of the cross which may always remind us of the challenges of our life in following Jesus Christ faithfully.

 Dr. E Sebastian CMI