Good Friday
ALMIGHTY God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the Cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
What is good about today?
What
can be good about a man dying a cruel death on a cross?
This
is the question of course that a non-believer or a new believer might ask about
the liturgical name for today’s celebration. It seems incongruous to put
together crucifixion and goodness.
But
that is exactly what our Christian faith does.
Now,
of course, our Faith is not teaching us that crucifying someone can in some
circumstances be a good thing in itself. The act of crucifying is a wicked act.
Those who performed it did a wicked thing. Those who authorised the act of
crucifying did an even more wicked thing. And those who persuaded the man in
authority to allow this to occur did a very wicked thing. By saying Jesus’
crucifixion is actually a great good we are not condoning the wickedness that
led to it and the wickedness involved in performing it.
Nevertheless
today we call good! Today is good not because of what men did but because of
what Christ did. That’s an important distinction to appreciate. It is a great
and good day because we focus on Christ and understand it as Christ understood
it.
During
Holy Week there are dark and evil moments. The darkest moment was arguably on
Holy Tuesday. On Holy Tuesday we remembered the final consent Judas gave to the
suggestion that had come to his mind that he should betray Jesus. St John, in
his gospel, tells us that the idea to betray Jesus was in fact a demonic
suggestion by Satan himself.
Now
as we all know we all can have wicked thoughts. Some of those wicked thoughts
are generated by us – by our own inner life. Some of those wicked thoughts come
from the world around us. Some of those wicked thoughts though come from fallen
angels, the demons. And principle amongst them is of course Satan. So, St John
tells us Satan made the suggestion in Judas’ conscious thoughts. Such a
suggestion can happen to any of us, by the way. It doesn’t mean we are bad. Our
Lord Himself received demonic suggestions/temptations in the desert. But Judas
began his wickedness by acting upon that suggestion to betray Jesus. However,
the really dark moment occurred in the gospel of Holy Tuesday when we heard that
Jesus revealed who would betray him to St John, the beloved disciple, through
the handing of the morsel after dipping it. In that moment Judas gave total
consent to betraying Jesus to His enemies who would do away with Him. And in
that moment Judas became possessed by Satan because of Judas’ total consent in
the act of doing away with Jesus.
This
was in fact the darkest and most evil moment because Judas was one of the
Twelve Jesus had chosen.Judas had believed in Jesus. He had witnessed the
miracles of Jesus. He had responded to Jesus’ call. He had followed Jesus when
many had fallen away. He had been raised to the great dignity of being one of
the Twelve. He knew who Jesus was!
His
fall began through sin. St John tells us Judas had been stealing from the
common purse. Judas, despite everything, had given into the temptation of
stealing money for selfish gain. Sin builds on sin. It starts small and gets
bigger unless we repent. By consenting to smaller secret sins it became harder
for Judas to resist temptation to greater things. In secret Judas began
slipping down a terrible slope which ended in consenting to the greatest sin,
that of killing God incarnate – which resulted in Satan taking possession of
Judas. St John in his gospel puts it over in three words: “it was night.” Yes,
outwardly the sun had fallen below the horizon. But great darkness had occurred
because of the fall of Judas one of the Twelve.
So
let us return to the final outworking of Judas’ betrayal of his Lord – to the
crucifixion on Good Friday. And the next thing we need to understand is that
God allows evil to occur. God does not want evil to occur but permits it to
occur. This is because God has given angels and men free will. He cannot just
stop evil occurring because it would contradict His gift of free will. So, we
come to the Redemption – the revelation of how God conquers evil, conquers sin
and its consequence death without taking away free will.
God began
revealing this plan all the way back at the time of the Exodus under Moses –
and it is what the Jews celebrated in the Passover. Lambs were sacrificed,
their blood poured out, stopped the Jews from the plague of death and they were
delivered from the death of slavery in Egypt. God began revealing that His plan
to save sinners was through sacrifice. Through Moses God decreed that worship
of Him would always involve sacrifice. For the Jews it involved the bloody
sacrifice of animals and the unbloody sacrifice of grain or bread. All of this
was pointing towards Good Friday. Jesus, God made man, would become the final
sacrificial victim, the Lamb of God, who would take away the sins not just of the
Jews but of the world.
It
is revealed to us from God after the first sin by Adam and Eve, that the
consequence of sin is not just suffering and hardship but death. The locus of
sin is towards death always. We see this in Judas’ fall. God’s way of deliverance
from sin is through sacrifice, and He reveals, through the prophey of Isaiah,
it is through God’s innocent suffering servant becoming a victim. Jesus is this
innocent victim. Death is the ultimate locus of all sin, and God conquers sin
by allowing the only innocent man to enter into the consequence of sin, by
entering into death. Jesus willingly allows Himself to do His Father’s will by
becoming the sacrificial victim, by becoming the lamb of God. Satan thinks God
has made a great mistake in becoming a vulnerable and weak man. God knows that
through self-emptying humility, redemption will happen. Evil does its worst and
falls into its own trap! Christ allows Himself to become the victim of our
sins, He pays the price of our sin, but because He is sinless and doesn’t
therefore deserve death, death is overturned! Death, which is the consequence
of sin, is defeated because God the Son enters it; and therefore, also the
Cross becomes the means of defeating sin.
Today
is Good Friday because the Cross of Jesus is not the revelation of evil, it is
the revelation of divine love – and in this divine love on the cross both sin
and death are defeated.
The
sacrifice of Jesus in divine love on the Cross is our Redemption and the heart
of all the Sacraments of the Church. The power of all the Sacraments, and the
power and the authority of the Church, all come from this Cross – and most
especially the Holy Mass. There is an error abroad that the Mass is mainly
about the Last Supper when friends gathered together for a last meal. It is an
error that Protestants unfortunately believe (I know because I was a
Protestant). The Mass is everything to us Catholics because its power comes
from the Cross and the sacrifice of Jesus which is the revelation of divine
love. The Mass is sacrifice most of all because it brings the fruit of the
Cross to us; it brings to us Christ Himself offering Himself to us. Christ the
Victim offering Himself and coming to us under the outward appearance of bread
and wine. This is what divine love is: total offering, total obedience, total
gift.
