Homily Good Friday
Year ABC: Fr. Michael Ufok Udoekpo
·
Isa 52: 13–53:12;· Ps 31:2,6,12-13,15-16,17,25;
· Heb 4:14-16;5:7-9;
· John18:1–19:42
The Mystery
of Christ’s Redemptive Suffering (Good Friday)
On Palm Sunday we began the mysteries of the Holy
Week celebrations, when Jesus willingly and lovingly entered Jerusalem, on a
donkey, to suffer on our behalf. That love-journey culminates on
the Cross of Christ on Good Friday, which we celebrate today, and as witnessed
by the scriptures, and in the sacraments, meant to strengthen us today in our
sufferings!Sacramentally, 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 cross, 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? These are legitimates questions?
Answers to these
questions are not single dimensional. Some
answers are discovered 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, 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 (John 3:16). 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 today’s Good Friday!
Scripturally, the redemptive and salvific elements of
Good Friday is revealed in in the 1st reading, Second Isaiah’s 4th
Song of the Suffering Servant of God (Isa 52:13–53:12).
Isaiah 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, our 2nd reading also reveals the salvific
nature of Good Friday when the homilists writes:
“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,
who may also be experiencing our challenges and crosses!
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 “universal” languages, spoken by the
messiah himself (Hebrew, Greek and Latin), on top of his Cross. Good Friday 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 ironic narrative that has
really made Good Friday, good and redemptive.
Today the victim has become the conqueror! As Pope
Francis has repeatedly 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, religious extremists,
poverty, ignorance, but who realize that God is with them, and that the power
of the oppressing forces are temporary.
Good Friday is
good, since believers in Christ, those begotten, and adopted by God, like sons
and daughters (the huiosthesia]; 1 John 5:4; Rom 8:15), like all of us, who
suffer and endure patiently with him, in all circumstances, have the hope of eternal life.
1.
In the light of
Good Friday’s liturgy what are the areas of our sufferings worthy of offering
it to the Lord?
2.
Do we believe in
the hiddenness of salvation in the Cross?
3.
How do we assist
others to bear their daily crosses with hope and trust in the Redeemer’s Assistance?
