Homily
for Good Friday Year ABC: Fr. Michael Udoekpo
Readings:
Isa 52: 13–53:12; Ps 31:2,6,12-13,15-16,17,25; Heb 4:14-16;5:7-9;
John18:1–19:42Today’s redemptive celebration, no doubts, has ironic features that only faith and reason can heal. What makes today’s Friday good? What is good about the symbolic red vestments priests and deacons, wear today, at the beginning of the liturgy? What is good about the altars left completely bare, without a crosses, without candles and without fanciful altar cloths? What is good that the Holy Mass, sacraments are not celebrated today, except for penance and anointing of the sick, are legitimates questions?
Answers to these questions are
not single dimensional. The meaning of “Good Friday” may be found when we deeply
and faithfully meditate on the crosses we shall soon venerate. Its meaning may
be revealed through our meditation on the stations of the cross re-enacted
across the global church. Still its meaning may be
revealed through the writings of the Church Fathers, Encyclicals and Apostolic
Letters of various Popes.
For example, John Paul II in his
1979 Redemptor Hominis (The Redeemer of Man, n.8) wrote: “The
redeemer of the world! In him has been revealed in a new and more wonderful way
the fundamental truth concerning creation to which the Book of Genesis gives
witness when it repeats several times: “God saw that it was good. [The “Good
Friday”] The good has its source in Wisdom and Love. In Jesus Christ the
visible world which God created for man–the world that, when sin entered [hatred,
jealousy, false accusations, oppression of the poor, corruption, illnesses,
ebola, poverty, death, etc], “was subjected to futility”– recovers again in its
original link with the divine source of Wisdom and Love. Indeed, God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son,” that whoever believes in him should not
perish but may have eternal life. In his
1984 Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris,
On the Meaning of Human Suffering (n.14),
John Paul II insisted that, “these words spoken by Christ in his conversation
with Nicodemus, introduce us into the very heart of God’s salvific work,” which
leads him to the Cross of Good Friday!That Good Friday is redemptive and salvific is more revealing in the passages of today’s Scripture Readings, beginning with Isaiah’s 4th song of the suffering servant of God (Isa 52:13–53:12) which says,
“He was spurned and avoided by people,
a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide
their faces, spurned and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that
he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and
afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him
was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed… he
shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses”( Isa 53:4-12).
The Letter to the Hebrews also
reveals the salvific nature Good Friday when it says, “In the days when Christ
was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and
tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because
of his reverence. Son though he was he learned obedience from what he suffered,
and when he was made perfect, he became source of eternal salvation for all who
obey him.” And we heard one of those Jesus’ humble loud cries into today’s
responsorial Psalm, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit “(Ps 31; Luke
23:46), repeated during every night prayers, during the liturgy of the hours. Finally, what makes today’s Friday, good, saving, victorious and redemptive, is particularly, and perhaps more comprehensively revealed in the passion theology of John’s Gospel (John 18–19), familiar to us.
Throughout the Johannine Passion,
Jesus “yet” is control. He gives Judas
Iscariot instruction to do quickly what he is about to do (John 18:2). In the garden
of the Kidron Valley, Jesus asked whom they were looking for. As soon as he
declared himself- the “I AM”, they all felt helplessly to the ground. Here lies the Good Friday?
In all, the Jesus of John is the
Son of Man that came down from heaven to whom the Father has turned over judgment.
When he is interrogated by the high
priests, Jesus turns back the interrogation: “Why do you question me?” He makes
it clear to Pilate that he has no authority over him. Throughout his ironic
trials, Pilates is nervous and shuttles back and forth between the Jews outside
the praetorium and Jesus, ironically, rather is inside the Praetorium. The shuttling Pilates finds no guilt in the
innocent and steady Jesus, yet he had him scourged innocently, and Pilate lacks
the courage to speak the truth. In John, only Christ is the truth, the life and
the way!
Jesus dies kingly and
triumphantly in John. His title- “Jesus
the Nazorean, the King of the Jews,” is universally written in three languages (Hebrew,
Greek and Latin) on top of his Cross. It is a universal Good Friday! A Friday
that saves the world? Even though his garments are divided as foretold, his priestly
tunic, the alb is intact, a priest forever! As long foretold, that on being
lifted up he would draw many to himself, on the foot of the cross, came the
fulfilment (tetelestai): Mary his
mother, the sister, wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, the disciple whom he love, Roman soldiers, Jews, Gentiles, and secrete believers like Nichodemus, Joseph
of Arimathea were all there! Jesus is
also given a kingly burial and laid in a garden!
This is the narrative that has
really made Good Friday, good and redemptive. Today the victim has become the
conqueror! As Pope Francis has repeated emphasized,
it is a gospel of suffering endurance for all who have in the course of history
been persecuted and abused by those who are politically, socially, religiously
and economically powerful, plagued by diseases, natural tragedies, man-made
violent structures, abuse of guns, ISIS, BOKO Haram, poverty, ignorance, but
who realize that God is with them, and that the power of the oppressors are
temporary.
Good Friday is good, since
believers in Christ, those begotten by God(1 John 5:4), who suffer and endure patiently with him, in all circumstances,
have eternal life. This why John Paul II
insisted (in his Salvifici Doloris- On
the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering) that, “The cross [redemptive
cross] of Christ [which we celebrate today] throws light in a most penetrating
way, on man’s life and in particular on his suffering. Through faith the cross
reaches man together with resurrection: the mystery of the passion is contained
in the Paschal Mystery.” That is to say, “the witnesses of Christ’s passion [today]
are at the same time witnesses of His resurrection (come Easter)!
