Holy Spirit Catholic Church
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Good Friday
April 10, 2009
Today we deal with death. On this Good Friday we face the fundamental fact that we are all vulnerable to dying. Our human condition is terminal. The first fact about our life is that no sooner are we born than we are destined for death. To admit this is not to be morbid but to be realistic.
If we prefer to ignore death, to overlook death, to put death at the far end of our "been there, done that" routine, today's memorial of the Lord's passion and death is the reality check we need. Today we review and remember that not even Jesus Christ could escape the absolute certainty of death. This Jesus whom we declare in our profession of faith to be "eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, one in being with the Father," this same Jesus who was born of the Virgin Mary and became man did not exempt himself from death. For to be human is to be born and then to die.
We believe, of course, that Jesus did not stay dead very long. On the third day he rose from the dead to claim victory over death. Tomorrow and Sunday we celebrate this victory with our joyous celebrations of the Easter Vigil and Easter morning. But on this Good Friday, we need to resist the urge to rush to the resurrection, to get to the victory celebration before we have a chance to let the fact of death sink deeply into our heads and hearts.
The Lent we have just completed is a kind of dress rehearsal for dying. If we have been serious about our Lenten program of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, then we have experienced the slow but sure diminishing and dying of some of our faults and failures, some of our less than helpful habits, some of our selfishness and laziness. We could call Lent a near-death experience by which we have come to a deeper awareness of just how precious life is and just how grateful we should be to have a second chance to live the commitment we made at our baptism to live as the true sons and daughters of God, the brothers and sisters of Jesus, and the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
We therefore need to make the most of this day. I urge and challenge you between now and the Easter Vigil or Easter Sunday to reread this same passion narrative in Chapters 18 & 19 of John's Gospel. Read them in the quiet of your own home together as a family. Read them as though you were reading them for the first time. Try to let these words draw you into the drama of one of the most important days in all human history.
This is the day when it was proven once and for all that God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. This is the day when it was established once and for all that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:16-17).
Today we deal with death. There is not one of us here this evening who will not die sooner or later. That we die is no secret. How we will die, how we hope to die is the focus of this Good Friday. On this day when we recall and renew the death of our loving and forgiving Savior, Jesus Christ, we look ahead to the day when we will say the same last three words Jesus said at his death: "It is finished."
What happens next will blow our minds. I can only imagine!