Holy Week Reflections - Good Friday

The readings for today’s liturgy offer us many reasons to believe that this Friday, with its emphasis on death and destruction, torture and tribulation, malicious plots and sheer mayhem, can still be named “good.”

Isaiah’s prophecy about God’s plan to right human wrongdoing begins with the prediction that “my servant shall prosper.” This promise implies that the lowly will be exalted and the downtrodden lifted up. The way this turn around occurs will be painful to behold since the Servant to come, who will save us from sin, will be despised, rejected, and sentenced to death in the most horrific manner imaginable. His endurance of this affliction will astonish everyone who witnesses it. He will be marred so badly he will hardly be recognizable.

The prophet continues to foretell the good news of redemption revealed in bad news like there being in the Savior’s appearance nothing we would desire to see and from whom many onlookers would want to hide their faces. The sooner they could erase this no account from their memory the better. Why was he “struck down by God”—bloodied, bound, and broken for our transgressions? How could he care so much about us that, as we read later in Romans 5:8, “…God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” He consented to “make his life an offering for sin.” From this anguished act of pure obedience, we see by the grace of God that evil could not withstand the power of pure love.

Psalm 31 addresses the fact that evil may try to crush our “rock of refuge” and invade our “strong fortress,” but God’s plan will prevail on the condition that our trust does not waver. It has to grow strong enough to stand under all circumstances with our Savior, who is like “a broken vessel” surrounded by nefarious plotters whose aim is to take his life. Trust must grow stronger when terror seems to have the upper hand. We pray to be delivered from evil, that love’s saving light will illumine our hearts. With Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, we long to say: “O my beloved Christ, crucified by love, I wish to be a bride for your Heart; I wish to cover you with glory; I wish to love you even until I die of love!” Dying young as she was, she would join Jesus in saying with the psalmist, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Our second reading from Hebrews gives us yet another reason to celebrate Christ as our High Priest in the order of Melchizedek. On the cross, he revealed that his sacrifice would be for all of humanity. As a man of sorrows, he understood our need for healing and compassion. Though he himself was without sin, he empathized with our weakness and made us the recipients of his mercy. As Saint Teresa of Avila writes in The Interior Castle (1.2.8), “…believe me, we shall practice much better virtue through God’s help than by being tied down to our own misery.” Jesus shows us that affliction is not the final stop on our faith journey. It can be a motivating factor for submitting our will to the will of the Father as Jesus, the “source of eternal salvation,” did for time and eternity.

With these readings alive in our heart, we are ready to enter into the Passion narrative itself from the Gospel of John. It unfolds in five major parts: his betrayal and arrest; the predicted denial of him by Peter; his interrogation, first by the high priest Caiaphas and then by Pontius Pilate; his being sentenced to death after being scourged and crowned with thorns; and his crucifixion, death, and burial. What is the good in this not-so-good sequence of events?

His betrayal, devastating as it was, occurred under the guidance of God so that Jesus could drink the cup [of salvation] given to him by the Father. To be betrayed was for us to be saved! Peter’s denial revealed our own fears of what we may have to endure to follow Jesus, but in the end what happened on this fateful night would prove once and for all that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn 4:18). His interrogation would give him a chance to declare his divine kingship and to testify to the truth of why he came into this world. Pilate had to admit he found no case against him. He would have allowed him to be released with a flogging, wearing a crown of thorns, but the crowd would have no part of his pardon. Evil unleashed with all its fury can be heard in the words, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

And so the die is cast. Jesus carries his cross to Golgotha. Nailed to it, above his emaciated body, is the inscription confirming him as “King of the Jews.” The executioners cast lots for his clothing. He thirsts and receives a sponge soaked with wine. Then it is finished. Jesus bows his head and gives up his spirit. The last act in this Good Friday narrative comes to pass with his burial in “a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.” Aiding our meditation are these moving words from The Interior Castle (7.4.15). Saint Teresa writes: “…during the little while this life lasts—and perhaps it will last a shorter time than each one thinks—let us offer the Lord interiorly and exteriorly the sacrifice we can. His Majesty will join it with that which He offered on the cross to the Father for us. Thus even though our works are small they will have the value our love for him would have merited had they been great.”

The ultimate reason why this Friday is good rests in the faith that it takes us from the Place of the Skull to a soon-to-be emptied garden tomb. Christ crucified is the Risen Lord, and his kingship extends to the ends of the earth.

Questions for Reflection

1.     What in your experience is the "good" this Friday represents?

2.     How has your trust in the providential care of God grown through these readings?

3.     What in your life at the moment would prompt you to say with Jesus, “Into your hands I commit my spirit?”