GOOD FRIDAY 2016
Catholic Peace Fellowship
Deacon Tom Cornell
After
the Last Supper, Jesus and his companions walked across the Kedron Valley to
Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives. If you
visit Israel today, you will surely want to see the Mount of Olives where Jesus
suffered his Agony in the Garden. You
come to a little stream at the bottom of the valley on the way. The guide tells you, “This is the Kedron River
Jesus
knew he had a special relationship with the Father even as a boy. “Didn’t you know I must be about my Father’s
business?” At his baptism he had heard
the voice from the clouds, “This is my beloved son, listen to him.” Then the Spirit led him into the desert where
he fasted and prayed for forty days and nights to discern his mission. And there he was tempted by Satan, who at
last departed from him, for a while, we are told, for a while. Satan would come back and tempt him again,
maybe now. As they waded across the
river, if Jesus turned his eyes to the right, southward, did it occur to him
that safety was not far away, escape?
The caves! Caves where robbers
and insurgents hid were just a night’s walk into the desert. Night was about to fall. By morning he could be far enough
away.... True God, true man. What drowning man does not grasp at
straws?
Jesus knew what was coming, who was coming, an
arrest party, Judas. In righteous wrath
Jesus had upset the tables of the buyers and sellers in the Temple court; he
had driven their animals out with a knotted cord and he had castigated the
Temple authorities: “My house
shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.” He had enemies. They were coming after him now, to kill
him. If he made it to the caves to hide
for a month or two maybe the anger against him would pass, maybe the tide would
turn again in his favor. Or maybe they’d just forget.
Just a few days earlier the crowds
had greeted Jesus on his arrival in Jerusalem riding on the back of an ass.
Then they shouted for joy, wouldn’t you, wouldn’t I? Imagine you are in that crowd. “Hosanna, hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord!” They cast their cloaks down
before him, and palm fronds. We are in
the same crowd a week later before Pilate’s praesidium. This time the shouts have changed. Now it’s “Give us Barabbas!” “We have no king but Caesar!” “Crucify him!”
Imagine
the humiliation on the Cross, Jesus stripped in front of men and women too, his
mother. His body is weakened by hours of
beating; he heaves, gasping for breath.
Taunts are hurled up at him, gall and vinegar raised to his parched
lips, three hours of this. “Father, into
your hands I commend my spirit.” It is
over. The salvific act is
completed. We are saved. At the reading of it we fall to our knees in
awe and sorrow and we pray.
God’s command to Abraham to spare Isaac
signaled the end of child sacrifice. The
descendants of Abraham were never to do such a thing, the most horrid
abomination among the pagans, feeding their sons and daughters to Moloch. Today, old men -- and now old women, send
young men -- and now young women to kill and to be killed in war and they call
it sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice they call it, when it is more truly
sacrilege. God does not will the death
of a sinner. He did not will the death
of Isaac and he did not will the death of Jesus. God cannot will evil. Sin did it, we did it,
you did it, I did it. God willed faith
and obedience, Obedience for Jesus was the acceptance of his destiny as it
unfolded in the spirit and in the deeds of nonviolence. And this Jesus did to the utmost, achieving
atonement, at-one-ment. But why such a
brutal death? To show us the ugliness of
sin and the greatness of God’s mercy!
Just
imagine: what if Jesus hanging on the
cross had prayed, “Father, you are just.
I demand justice now. Avenge me!” There would have been no salvation. No! He
prayed, “Father, forgive them. They know
not what they do!” Jesus obeyed. Jesus heard the will of God in the depths of
his soul and he acted upon it: God demands compassion, forgiveness. So were we saved, by his obedience and his
prayer of forgiveness, in the final revelation of God’s love, the Paschal
Mystery, life out of death.
From what are we saved? From sin, of course, the results of sin,
hell. Rings of torture, fire, steam and
ice in Dante’s Divine Comedy are
poetic images inadequate to describe what it is not to love any more, to be
alone. “Hell is not to love anymore”
(George Bernanos). Sin is a deliberate
rupture of right relationship. Sin is a
turning from love. Sin is refusal to
acknowledge Truth. “What is truth?”
Pilate asked, not the last skeptic. From
what are we saved? From the wages of
sin, death, the second death, hell, utter alienation. It need not be. It is true.
God’s seal on Christ’s redemptive act is the Resurrection.
Forgiveness is an act of will to break the
cycle of vengeance and violence and death.
Jesus forgave. Peace is Christ’s
gift to us, a peace that the world cannot give.
There can be no peace without justice.
Pope John Paul taught there can be no true justice without forgiveness
for we are all enmeshed in the web of guilt.
Vengeance is death. Forgiveness
is life.
Oh God, take away our hearts of stone and
give us hearts of flesh. Inscribe in our
hearts your law of justice; carve into us the New Commandment that Jesus gave
his own at the Last Supper, to love one another “as I have loved you,” that is,
even unto death. Make us know that every
time we turn to violence even in a just cause we shout, “Give us Barabbas!” Every time we put loyalty to nation-state
above loyalty to God we shout, “We have no king but Caesar!” Every time we strike out in anger to harm or
to kill, we shout, “Crucify him!”
Forgive us, Lord, we know not
what we do! W
