Author: CCW

Good Friday: “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Simeon’s prophetic words to Mary follow immediately upon his prophecy about Jesus. “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against.” It speaks to the meaning of Good Friday not just for “many in Israel” but also for the Gentiles, as the Nunc Dimittis makes clear. Christ is “a light to lighten the Gentiles,/and the glory of thy people Israel.” Holy Week has presented us with the spectacle of all human sin and cruelty as visited upon Jesus Christ. It is a week in which “the thoughts of many hearts” are brought to light, and if we have hearts to feel what we see and hear, our souls are surely doubly pierced: in grief and sorrow for our sins, and in joy and gladness for the love of God in Christ. But only because he is pierced by us and for us on the Cross. The question is whether we will be pierced inwardly by what we behold and see. If so, then this day will rightly be “Good” Friday for us individually and collectively.

We behold Christ crucified and we hear the last words of Christ on the Cross. In the devotional tradition of The Seven Last Words of Christ Crucified as developed in Lima, Peru, in the 17th century by an indigenous Peruvian Jesuit priest, Fr. Alonso Messio Bedoya, and transported from there to Europe and then back again to the Americas, the last words begin and end with the prayer of the Son to the Father in the bond of their mutual and eternal love in the Spirit, words found in Luke’s account of the Passion. Tonight in The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday, we hear and participate in The Passion according to St. John.

John provides three of Christ’s last words just as Luke gives us three words of Christ. Matthew and Mark give us the same one word, Christ’s cry of dereliction. In Bedoya’s ordering, Luke gives us the first, second, and seventh word; John, the third, fifth and sixth word, Matthew and Mark, the fourth word. Tonight we hear the last word of Christ in John’s account: “It is finished.” It is the only word from the Cross without reference to anyone personally, without a personal pronoun, as it were. It is a kind of objective summary or conclusion. The Greek makes it clear that it signals the sense of accomplishment, an end or purpose achieved; a telos.

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Maundy Thursday: “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

There is a remarkable complexity to Maundy Thursday. There is, of course, The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Luke which provides three of the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” is the first word. The second is Christ’s word to the one who was crucified with him who said, “Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom.” Jesus responded, “Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”

Luke’s third word becomes the seventh word in the devotional tradition of the Last Words of the Crucified developed by the indigenous Peruvian Jesuit priest, Fr. Alonso Messio Bedoya, in Lima in the late 17th century. From there the practice travelled to Europe ultimately shaping the liturgical and musical devotions for both Protestant and Catholic Churches. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” With Luke, the words of the Crucified begin and end with the prayer of the Son to the Father in the Spirit of their eternal love.

There are as well other devotional and symbolic events on this day such as the washing of the feet, the giving of the Royal Maundy, the King’s coin, to the poor, the stripping of the Altar, and the watching at the Altar of Repose with Christ in Gethsemane. But most crucially, perhaps, Maundy Thursday recalls the Institution of the Holy Eucharist on the night, this very night, in which Christ is betrayed.

All these events highlight two themes: service and sacrifice in humility and love. Dramatic and moving, the liturgies of Maundy Thursday draw us into the vast and spacious mysteries of sin and love, as George Herbert suggested. They reveal to us our hearts of sin and they pierce our souls in sorrow and in love. They convict our consciences and move us to acts of compassion and service to others. All as grounded in the Passion and in the forms of our participation in the Passion of Christ. The three last words in Luke’s Passion contribute to our growing into the mystery of Christ.

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Holy Wednesday: “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

The Epistle reading for Wednesday in Holy Week recalls and completes the Epistle reading for Passion Sunday from Hebrews 9. It centers our attention on Christ’s Passion as the “forgiveness of sins” through “the shedding of his blood” in the sacrifice of himself.. “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness,” and “now, once for all, at the end of time, he hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” It offers a way of understanding theologically just what it means to say that “Christ is the Mediator of the new covenant, [and] that by means of death” so that “they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” This theological understanding is complemented by the Passion according to St. Luke, read today and tomorrow.

Luke, in Dante’s famous phrase, is “scriba mansuetudinis Christi,” the scribe of the gentleness of Christ. This, wonderfully illustrated in The Beginning of the Passion According to St. Luke. Luke, helps us to feel something of the meaning of Christ’s Passion psychologically, emotionally, and personally, and what it means for us. In other words, Luke gives us a sense of the inner struggles, turmoil and dynamic of the Passion in Christ himself in the movement towards the Cross.

Luke shows what is at work in the forces of evil that seek to kill Jesus especially with respect to the intentions of the chief priests and scribes and the role of Judas in Christ’s betrayal. Satan, Luke tells us, “entered into Judas” who conspires with the chief priests and captains to betray Jesus unto them. Satan is the tempter, the devil, who as a created being is good but exists in denial of his own being. He is, as Augustine nicely puts it, “an evil good”. He shows us the radical nature of evil as the contradiction and negation of the good upon which it utterly depends, the evil to which we concede so easily.

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Holy Tuesday: “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul; that the
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

The lesson read at Communion on Tuesday in Holy Week is the third of the four so-called Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah. It is the only one read in the eucharistic readings this week. At Evening Prayer on Palm Sunday, the fourth of the Servant Songs was read (Isaiah 52.13- 53.end). In today’s office of Morning Prayer, the first of Servant Songs, Isaiah, 42. 1-9, was read. The third song will be read again at Evening Prayer on Good Friday. In the Christian understanding, the suffering servant is both Israel collectively speaking and the unity of all human suffering concentrated in the person of Christ. The songs belong to the revealing of “the thoughts of many hearts” and thus to our being pierced in our souls.

The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark depicts the trial of Christ at the hands of Pilate who gives in to the wishes of the people who seek his crucifixion. We hear again the cries of “crucify” even though Pilate knows that the chief priests of Israel “have moved the people” against Jesus. He has him scourged or beaten and delivered to be crucified. It is a betrayal of human justice in the name of convenience and complicity with the mob, a betrayal of truth and human compassion. Such is the madness of crowds.

What follows are the indignities of being mocked by the Roman soldiers before being led out to be crucified. Simon, a Cyrenian, is compelled by them “to bear his cross.” Not freely and willingly but under compulsion. He is crucified and cruelly scorned and berated on the Cross by the people, by the chief priests and scribes. Their words of insult mock the idea of “Christ, the King of Israel,” even as the words of his accusation, “The King of the Jews,” are superscribed on the Cross. If all this were not enough to disturb us, “they that were crucified with him reviled him” too. We behold him whom we, in these aspects of our humanity, have betrayed and nailed to the Cross.

All this is what he suffers and suffers silently before Pilate and on the Cross. Mark then tells us that “there was darkness over the whole land from the sixth hour to the ninth hour,” something seen, as it were, that is symbolic of the darkness of men’s hearts. “At the ninth hour,” Mark, like Matthew, gives us Christ’s cry of dereliction. It is the only word from the Cross in their accounts of the Passion. “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”, interpreted as “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” These words from Psalm 22 cry out simply to God and not, as in Luke, to God as Father.

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