113. Good Friday (II)

Meditations no. 159 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

In his suffering, Christ looks for faithful souls, and finds very few.

For Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, the throne of triumph is ready. We have seen him making his way up to Calvary under the heavy weight of the Cross. He can no longer stay on his feet. The scourging, the crowning with thorns, and the rough treatment he has received along the way have made his most holy Body into one enormous wound.

Now our Lord is nailed to the wood, and the Cross is raised up. Suffering all that can be suffered, he spreads his arms in the gesture of an eternal Priest. Three long hours of agony follow, in which he is the target of the mockery of the crowd and the sarcasm of the chief priests. My people what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me!

In the midst of so much suffering and bitterness, Jesus Christ looks for those who had followed him closely in his lifetime. His heart feels the need for consolation, and all he finds is a tiny band of faithful souls. The rest have fled. Only recently Peter had promised to follow him even if I must die with you; James had wanted to burn down the village that had refused our Lord hospitality; but they and the rest of the Apostles have all run away. In his suffering, Christ looks for faithful souls and finds very few: nearly everyone has forsaken him.

The tragedy of the Passion brings to fulfilment our own life and the whole of human history. We can’t let Holy Week be just a kind of commemoration, our Father stresses. It means contemplating the mystery of Jesus Christ as something which continues to work in our souls. The Christian is obliged to be alter Christus, ipse Christus: another Christ, Christ himself. Through Baptism all of us have been made priests of our lives, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Everything we do can be an expression of our obedience to God’s Will and so perpetuate the mission of the God-Man.

Once we realize this, we are immediately reminded of our wretchedness and our personal failings. But they should not dishearten us; we should not become pessimistic and put our ideals aside. Our Lord is calling us, in our present state, to share his life and make an effort to be holy.

Let us contemplate the scenes on Calvary as people who have a leading part to play in the story of Christ’s life. May our Lord find us faithful and persevering, close to the Cross.

Our Lord dies for us, showing how much he loves us.

By now they have fastened Jesus to the wooden Cross. The executioners have ruthlessly carried out the sentence. Our Lord, with infinite meekness, has let them have their way.

Let us lift up our eyes once again to the Cross. Truly, he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. His body was drenched with the blood flowing from his hands and feet, pierced by the nails. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. That is Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a Cross.

Why did our Lord choose to die on the Cross? Could he not have redeemed us in a less painful way, without shedding his Blood? Why did he wish to deliver himself up so totally for us? Truly, it was not necessary for him to undergo so much torment He could have avoided those trials, those humiliations, that ill-usage, that iniquitous judgement, and the shame of the gallows, and the nails and the lance… But he wanted to suffer all this for you and for me. And we, are we not going to respond?

Very likely, our Father tells us, there will be times, when alone in front of a crucifix, you find tears coming to your eyes. Don’t try to hold them back… But try to ensure that those tears give rise to a resolution.

In the intimacy of our heart we hear Jesus’ words: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. We also hear the gentle reproach which our Father passed on to us: Love means deeds, not sweet words.

Let us meditate on our Lord, wounded from head to foot out of love for us. Using a phrase which approaches the truth, although it does not express its full reality, we can repeat the words of an ancient writer: the body of Christ is a portrait in pain. At the sight of Christ bruised and broken - just a lifeless body taken down from the Cross and given to his Mother -at the sight of Jesus destroyed in this way, we might have thought he had failed utterly. Where are the crowds that once followed him? Where is the kingdom he foretold? But this is victory, not defeat. We are nearer the Resurrection than ever before; we are going to see the triumph which he has won with his obedience.

It would have been possible for God to free mankind in another way, but love always goes further. It knows nothing of calculations and measures. Jesus dies for us, to show how much he loves us. Let us repeat with our Father: I am yours, and I give my whole self to you; gladly do I nail myself to your Cross, ready to be in the crossroads of this world a soul dedicated to you, to your glory, to the work of Redemption, the co-redemption of the whole human race.

We will be faithful if we often contemplate Christ crucified.

It is Love that has brought Jesus to Calvary. And once on the Cross, all his gestures and all his words are of love, a love both calm and strong.

We keep going back to the Cross, keeping our eyes upon it, because that wood which holds his limbs, St Augustine tells us, is not only a throne; it is also a chair of learning from which our Master teaches. There we will learn to weep for our sins which are the cause of the death of the Holy One, the one who is the source of all holiness. There we will renew our resolution to imitate his generous self-giving.

And in this contemplation, it is easy to appreciate the tenderness and strength in the Church’s song today: Dulce lignum, dulces clavos / dulce pondus sustinet: Sweet wood, sweet nails, bearing the sweet load. This hymn invites us to sing and celebrate the glorious struggle of our Lord, the victory of the Cross, the splendid triumph of Christ. The Redeemer of the universe is sacrificed and triumphs. God, the Lord of all creation, does not make his presence felt by force of arms or by the temporal power of his followers, but by the nobility of his infinite love. The contemplation of his love strengthens our desire to be nailed with him, joyfully, on the Cross, and to co-redeem with him, so that our nothingness is enriched in a wonderful way by being fused with the Precious Blood which pours from the broken body of Jesus. Terra, pontus, astra, mundus / quo lavantur flumine: The earth, the sea, the stars, the whole world, are washed in the river of his blood.

It is good for us to try to understand better the meaning of Christ’s Death. We must get beyond external appearances and clichés. We need to put ourselves really and truly into the scenes which we are reliving during these days: Jesus’ sorrow, his Mother’s tears, the disciples’ flight, the courage of the holy women, the daring of Joseph and Nicodemus who asked Pilate for the body of our Lord.

Let us, above all, come close to Jesus in his Death and to his Cross which stands out in silhouette above the summit of Golgotha. But we must approach him sincerely and with the interior recollection that is a sign of Christian maturity. The divine and human events of the Passion will then pierce our soul as words spoken to us by God to uncover the secrets of our heart and show us what he expects of our lives.

Many years ago I saw a painting which made a deep impression on me. It showed the Cross of Christ with three angels beside it. One was weeping disconsolately; one held a nail in his hand, as if trying to convince himself it was true; and the third was rapt in prayer. Here we have a programme for each of us: to cry, believe and pray.

Here before the Cross, we should have sorrow for our sins and for those of all men, for they are responsible for Jesus’ death. We should have faith to penetrate deep into this sublime truth which surpasses our understanding and to fill ourselves with amazement at God’s love. And we should pray so that Christ’s life and death may become the model and motivation for our own life and self-giving. Only thus will we earn the name of conquerors: for the risen Christ will conquer in us and death will be changed to life.

As we finish this time of prayer, our eyes turn to the foot of the Cross where we find Christ’s sorrowful Mother. She is accompanied only by a handful of women, and by one young man, because the rest have fled. Call upon her with all your strength: Virgo fidelis! Virgin most faithful! And ask her that those of us who call ourselves God’s friends may truly be so at all times.