On this Good Friday we enter into the greatest of mysteries
and the very crux of our faith. And it is about the triumphant movement of the
biggest story of all – the story of the human race.
In the origins of the human race we were created in goodness
and love. Originally God made us in His own image and likeness. We lived in complete
harmony and freedom. Made with freedom to love or not love, we were tested and
alas failed the test. Satan tempted Eve, and then after Eve had fallen, she
tempted Adam who also fell. Our ancient human ancestors fell from grace and
innocence. The consequences of this fall were sin and death. We now did not
freely delight in doing the good; instead we delighted in doing what was wrong.
All the children and descendants of Adam and Eve suffer from this. And the
fruit of this is all the evil we see in the world.
And we all inherit from our ancestors this propensity
towards sin, which means in the end, death (real eternal death). And so of course we need saving – we really,
really need salvation, because, otherwise, all there is, is death for eternity
(that’s what we call hell). So we need lifting up from this original sin and
all our sins. And the story of our salvation
is a movement. It is a movement of descending and ascending, as St Paul puts so
beautifully in his Philippian hymn (Phil 2:1-12). God descends and becomes Man, that by our
union with Him, we might ascend from our fallen state, and enjoy everlasting
life (which is what we call heaven).
That sounds great until we realise the price of the
descending. For the healing to happen,
Christ must enter obediently into the heart of our problem. The heart of our
problem is sin. The only perfect, good man must submit Himself to become the
victim of injustice, hatred, untruth, disobedience and evil – the whole gamut
of our fallen nature – that He might enter even into death itself. By facing death in obedience, in truth, in
righteousness, in total goodness and in perfect love, He is able to conquer
death; to conquer evil; to conquer our fallen-ness; to conquer sin. This is how
the victory occurs and it is wonderful but it is also awful at the same time.
Christ our God became the Priest and Sacrifice in the great
Mass offered for us on the Cross, and His death, made present in every Mass
thereafter, brings us the grace of this victory, and indeed the grace through
all the Sacraments.
And so we rejoice this day in the Triumph of the Cross of
our Saviour Jesus Christ. We glory in
His victory, yes bought at such an awful price, yet a wondrous and glorious and
entirely complete triumph over sin, death and evil. Our Enemy is defeated and we rejoice! It is
truly a Good day.
Fr Ian
