Homily for Good Friday- April 2, 2010

Today, my friends, the chips are down. On Good Friday, we cannot avoid the real Christian issue. At Christmas, we can dream of angels and a star, a beautiful teenage mother and an infant in straw. On Easter Sunday, we will be glad and rejoice because God and goodness have risen from the grave.
But today there is no dreaming, today little rejoicing. Today we come face to face with the primary Christian symbol, the cross. So, let us look briefly at some facts, and then ask what they say to us today.
We begin with the first. Jesus died. On that drab afternoon 2000 years ago, your God and mine died. I know that death could not destroy divinity. And still it is true, God died manifested in Jesus. On Calvary’s cross there was only one person…and He was God. If there is one mystery harder to accept that “God was born,” it is the mystery that “God died.” No wonder we had church heresies: Patriarch Nestorius protested in the fifth century: “A born God, a dead God, a buried God I cannot adore.” In the 60’s we were shocked by a theology that claimed that God was dead. We would have been shocked even more rudely on Calvary: God did indeed die.
The second fact was that Jesus really suffered. I do not want to fictionalize Calvary. I do not want us to imagine that, because Jesus was God, He felt pain less than we do. If anything, He suffered more intensely, He was more sensitive, alive to everything human. The crown on His head was plaited with real thorns; it was spit that splashed His face; a tough whip made His back flinch; those were sharp nails that pierced this hands and feet; the blood flowing to the ground was His. “Into Your hands I commit my spirit” was really His last breath. Little wonder He called out in the garden: “Father, take this cup from me! God don’t let me die!”
The third fact was that Jesus suffered and died for us. There are two important people in that Passion: Jesus is one, the other is you and me. It is St Paul’s unbelieving words: “The Son of God gave Himself for me.” He did not die for humanity. He died for Adam, who could not abide in God’s love for the space of one temptation. He died for Judas as well as for John and Peter, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Nazareth. He died for both thieves who were crucified with Him, even for the one who kept cursing Him. He died for you and me, as if Christ and His cross had arms only for you and me. He died for every sinner and every sin from the first Adam until His final coming.
Fourthly, Jesus died for you and me because He loved us. He did not have to die, and did not die because He had no other choice. He said: “No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own free will.” It’s so difficult to accept that God should die for love of you and me. And finally, by His death, Jesus gave us life.
But what does all of this say to us? God died – a painful death – for you and me – out of love – to give us life. The words of Jesus are uncompromising: “If you want to follow me, if you would be my disciple, you will take up your cross daily. If you want to save your life, you must lose it for my sake.”
The point is very clear. The cross of Christ must be touched by you and me personally, individually. Life through death – an everyday dying to myself brings us life.
What does this all mean? What is this cross you and I must take up daily? It’s easy to find the cross elsewhere in the starving of Haiti, in the hills of Tanzania, in the country of Iraq, on the streets of Calcutta, in the poverty of Appalachia, in Somalia, in the refugee camps throughout the world. It isn’t hard to discover the cross of those who live on the streets of Honolulu, in those addicted to alcohol and drugs, and those in psychiatric hospitals.
I want to tell all of us today, we are, each of us, a unique authority of our own Calvary. I want each of us to reflect, for example: What do you usually avoid? And whom? Are you built only for comfort? Do you ever fast except to lose weight? Who or what matters most in your life? If you had to confess what you want out of human living, would it have anything to do with a crucified Lord? Do you ever thank God for what you have? Where does Jesus and Church rank in your top ten? How do you handle illness, from a common cold to a threat of cancer? What are you afraid of…death, life? In whom do you see Christ…only in those who you like and who like you? To whom do you give bread and drink…to the hungry and to the thirsty, or to the well-fed and those well taken care of? When did you last welcome a stranger or give clothes to the naked? Who are the sick you visit or call or send cards to? What prisons of body or mind have seen your face?
On this Good Friday, at this point in your life, who are you like…Mary? John? Pilate? Joseph of Arimathea? Judas? Peter? The disciples looking on from a safe distance?
I believe that the Church will survive heresy and hatred, sin and persecution and the church’s sex scandals. But what imperils our Catholic Christian church today is our own luke warmness and I mean all of us and that includes priests, religious and bishops. Jesus Christ does not meet our needs nor turn us on. What does? What we see on television? A bomb thrown into a crowd and people stamped to their death? A movie wins the Academy Award for the best picture? 200 people are killed in Afghanistan? The Israelis still building homes in East Jerusalem? But today God dies on a cross for us and business goes on as usual. People continue their routine business, do their work, go shopping, drop by for happy hour on the way home, and life goes on.
Today, I am not suggesting that we have ceaseless emotion, wailing and weeping. This type of emotion fizzles out. It doesn’t do anyone any good. I am asking that we live our Catholic Christian commitment to live day after day, the dying and rising that our Holy Week symbolizes. It is not enough to represent the crucifixion of Christ liturgically, and to read it out loud twice a year. The liturgy expresses today what goes on in the rest of our lives. Our liturgical journey is our human journey, or is it? Does today’s crucifixion have anything to do with what goes on in the rest of your life and mine?
A few years ago I read a remarkable little book. It’s title: ‘The Voice of Blood.’ It tells of five Jesuits. Ordinary people, ordinary talents, ordinary defects and weaknesses. One doubted for years that he was worth anything. One was tough for others to clue into. One was awfully distant, lived like Alice in
Wonderland. One was something of a disaster as Vice-Provincial and Director of Novices. One talked so much that they said you had to “subtract 11 and divide by 2”. They found Christ and His cross in El Salvador, in Tanzania, in Brazil. Each found his dying and rising in service – to the poor and illiterate, in the bush, among teenagers, and South American Indians –to those who desperately needed their service. A few years ago, each one found his Good Friday. Each was murdered. Where my friends, where is yours and my Good Friday.