by CCW | 18 April 2014 21:00
Nowhere does this text have greater application than on this day we call Good Friday. It is all the business of this day for us to hang not just upon the words of the Passion of Christ but, more specifically, upon the very words of Christ on the Cross. We hang upon the words of the one who hangs there for us and for our salvation. What we see and hear from Christ crucified is altogether for our good, our joy and our salvation.
There can be no Easter joy without the Passion. Christ’s words on the Cross reveal the ultimate triumph of love over sin and death. The seven last words of Christ on the Cross are taken from the four evangelists in their accounts of the Passion. Traditionally the last words of Christ begin and end with an address to the Father: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do” and “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
Everything, we might say, is gathered into the primacy of the spiritual relation of the Father and the Son in the bond of the Spirit. Christ is the Word and Son of the Father; the uttered being of the Father who has come to do the will of him who sent him, to redeem our wayward humanity by calling us home to God. There is the forgiveness of sins; there is the final movement of the Son’s love towards the Father. We are embraced in this divine love.
The old spiritual has it exactly right: he’s got the whole world in his hands. Such is the nature of redemption. God seeks our good. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Love trumps all and triumphs over all our sins and follies. This is what makes this day Good Friday.
It belongs especially to this day to hang upon the words of The Passion according to St. John and especially upon the words of the Crucified in his account of the Passion. His Gospel gives us three of the seven words. There is the word of the Crucified to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son” and to John, “Behold, your mother!” The commandment to love one another signals our care for one another in very concrete and specific ways but it is borne out of Christ’s love for us shown in the intensity of his Passion. Perhaps no word captures so completely the unity of the love of God and the love of one another.
There is the word of the Crucified, “I thirst,” a word which extends beyond the realities of the physical though without in any way denying its demands to suggest one of the Beatitudes, namely, the “hunger[ing] and thirst[ing] after righteousness.” It expresses Christ’s thirsting after our good, our blessedness which can only be found in his righteousness, in the justicia dei, the justice of God upon which all truth and goodness and order depend. The physical thirst of the Crucified is but one aspect of our betrayals of the righteousness of God, on the one hand, and the signifier of the divine redemption of our unrighteousness, on the other hand. Christ thirsts for our good. Such is the goodness of Good Friday.
And finally, there is John’s last word of the Crucified, “it is finished.” And, having said this, “he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” As an ancient prayer puts it: “Accomplished and concluded, O Christ our God, so far as in us lies is the Mystery which thou hast ordained” for “we have had the Memorial of thy Passion.” The remembering of the Passion is especially the business of this day. The word, “it is finished,” signifies the accomplishing of the divine will for our good and our blessedness. It is about God’s purpose for our humanity. We are thrown into the heart of God and into the knowledge of God’s good will towards us, a concept that is constantly before us in the Prayer of Thanksgiving after Communion. “We most heartily thank thee that thou dost graciously feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; assuring us thereby of thy favour and goodness towards us.”
The sacramental connection is made explicit in what follows from this word. Christ’s side is pierced by the soldier’s spear and “at once there came out blood and water.” Out of the wounded side of Christ, the Fathers of the Church observe, flow the sacraments of the Church, holy Baptism and Communion. In John’s account of the Passion, this moment is about the fulfillment of the Scriptures, an important aspect of the fulfilling of the divine will for our salvation. “Not a bone of him shall be broken,” and even more with respect to the business of this day, “they shall look on him whom they have pierced.”
We hang upon these words, the words of the Crucified and the words of the Passion in all of its fullness. It means nothing less and nothing more than to look on him whom we have pierced. It means to look and be pierced, to be convicted in our hearts of sin but even more to be convinced of God’s love.
It is altogether about the theological concept that God, and God alone, can bring good out of evil. Our evil has been on full display throughout Holy Week; we see and feel its destructive and negative power. But we see and hear something more and something greater: the love of God in Christ Jesus. It changes the tragedy of our lives into the divine comedy of human redemption.
Something is required of us. We are challenged to hang upon his words and learn the lessons of love. They are life-long. Lent and Holy Week simply concentrate them for us into a shorter span, into the intensity of the Passion. We hang upon the words of the one who hangs upon the Cross for our redemption. His words gather us into his love, the love that is greater than all our sin and death.
Fr. David Curry
Good Friday, Solemn Liturgy 2014
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