 |
| Salvador Dali's Crucifixion |
Many of us are staying safe at home to contain the spread of the coronavirus. And even though we are physically distant, yet we are gathering spiritually via livestream.
Why? To celebrate the Lord’s Passion. Yet in the tragedy of Good Friday there’s the triumph of Easter: a paradox.
Sin broke our relationship with God. We were created to reflect the image of God, and then we clouded that image with sin. A problem.
The Gospel according to John summed up the solution: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Yes, God fixed that broken relationship through the death/resurrection of Jesus by the power of the Spirit.
This afternoon, I would like to invite you to meditate with me on the seven last words of Jesus on the cross. Why? So that these words can be a guide in nurturing our life with God.
“Father, forgive them.”
One word can sum up Jesus’s life. He is compassion incarnate. Calvary is the climax of his compassion.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are what Good Friday is all about.
We sometimes may feel wronged. But God calls us to let go of wrongs done to us so that we can move forward with our lives, so that we can be at peace with God, one another and ourselves.
We pray in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” To the extent that I forgive others, God will forgive me.
“Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Three men are crucified together. One recognizes Jesus’s kingly status, saying: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus’s reply: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Here is the story of our salvation in a nutshell. We admit we’re sinners and beg for God’s mercy. Jesus responds, “Today you will be with me with Paradise.”
The cross is our salvation. Jesus also asks us to carry our own inescapable crosses so that we can be conformed to likeness of him-once crucified, now gloriously alive among us especially in the sacramental life of the Church.
“Woman, behold your son … Behold your mother.”
Here’s a mother losing her only son, her family. “Look!” Jesus murmurs to his mother. Then to John: “Look!” And the disciple took her into his home.
In the climactic moment of our salvation, God recreated us as his sons and daughters, transformed us into new creatures. John stands for all Christians; Mary represents the church bringing forth sons and daughters of God our Father.
Yes, the church brought you and me to new life in baptism, the church enlightens our minds with God’s word, feeds our souls at the Lord’s supper, and holds us dying like the mother in Michelangelo’s Pieta.
The church above all challenges us to focus on the things of God even though it often seems preoccupied with the things of earth.
“My God, why have you forsaken me?”
At about 3 p.m. on a dark Friday, a crucified Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” How can this be? The God who said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” now is absent? Where is my God now? Perhaps Jesus was simply reciting Psalm 22. I don’t think so. In his pain, Jesus felt loneliness, abandonment.
Loneliness goes hand in hand with life. We are separated from people we love, things we cherish, life itself. But God doesn’t forsake us even though we may try to forsake God. May we always sense the presence of God, especially in moments of loneliness and God-forsakenness.
“I thirst.”
Jesus was physically thirsty. But was physical thirst uppermost in Jesus’s mind? Remember Jesus kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus thirsted to complete what he had been born to do. He spent his life for us out of love.
May our daily prayer be: Lord, I am thirsty; please awaken within us your Spirit so that we can touch with your grace the image of God in every person who enters into our lives, no matter how unkempt and disheveled they may be.
“It is finished.”
Jesus hangs helplessly from the cross and quietly utters, “It is finished.” His mission is completed. Incredible love is consummated.
Yes, God could have redeemed us otherwise. So why crucifixion?
The First Letter of Peter explains: “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps.” God clearly felt we could learn how to love if we saw how Jesus loved: “he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives….”
Jesus’s work is not complete until God’s favor, God’s love touches humankind in every generation. When we participate in God’s love, then we are completing the work of God.
And finally: “Into your hands I commend my Spirit.”
These words can be found in Psalm 31. Jesus surrendered himself unconditionally when in his dying everything seemed to fall away from him. Jesus died with faith in God’s love, with hope that he would live forever.
God asks you and me that we too let go of our earthbound existence, all we call human living: friends and loved ones, possessions, our very selves
It’s a movement into darkness. But for the Christian, life is Christ, and death is gain. When Jesus cried, “Into your hands I commend my Spirit,” he was affirming life, eternal life, life within the triune God.
On this Good Friday, may God give us the grace to live the words of Jesus with faith in God’s love and with the hope in life with God forever. Amen.
