A Homily for Good Friday, 2007
Today our attention is drawn towards the Cross on which Christ Jesus, the Savior of the world died. The Cross is a dominant image in Christianity. As Catholics, we begin every liturgy and prayer with the Sign of the Cross. We hang crosses in our churches, on the walls of our homes, and many of us wear them around our necks. Despite the image of the Cross being so prevalent in Christianity, how many of us really take time to reflect on what the Cross means for us? How often do we sit before a Cross and contemplate the great mystery that is the Cross?
Pope John XXIII had a Crucifix hanging on his bedroom wall. He would pray in front of his Crucifix every night before retiring, and every morning upon waking. And whenever the cares of the Church awakened him during the night, he would pray before the Crucifix on his bedroom wall. This beloved Pope, of blessed memory, once said, “A cross is the primary symbol of God’s love for us.”
As I reflected on the Cross this week, two words came to mind – trust and generosity. The Cross is the ultimate sign of generosity. One thing that I think we too often forget is that God does not need our love, or our worship, or us for that matter. God is utterly complete in Himself – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God did not need to create us, but He choose to do so purely out of His generous love. Even more amazing, God continues to be generous towards us despite all of our sinfulness. God is so generous in His love for His creation, that He sent His only begotten Son to us, and Jesus demonstrates this completely generous love of God by offering Himself on the Cross for us. Jesus did nothing wrong, committed no sin, yet He was willing to take on all the sins of the world so that we might have eternal life in a perfect communion of love with the Trinity. Jesus just gives and gives, and all that we need to do is accept the countless graces that He generously offers to us.
The other word that came to mind as I contemplated the Cross this week was trust. In truth we can say that salvation history began with a breakdown of trust. Satan tempted Adam and Eve by making them suspicious of God, by making them start to question whether or not God really was their loving Father. When they stopped trusting God, their relationship with God was shattered, and the human race was cut off from its source of happiness. That is when we started to need a savior.
Jesus’ mission was to reestablish communion between the human race and God, and He did so by totally trusting in God, His Father. Christ’s cross is a bridge of trust that makes it possible for us to return to communion with God, the source of our happiness. On the Cross, Jesus reverses Adam and Eve’s lack of trust, by completely trusting His Father for us.
This is what the mystery of the Cross is all about. Jesus willingly came down to our level, “and the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus embraced His human nature, with all of its limitations. When Satan made it hard for Him to obey His Father’s will, Jesus continued to trust and obey, even in spite of the indescribable suffering that He endured. As the letter to the Hebrews expresses it, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered….”
How was Jesus able to do this? Again, the letter to the Hebrews gives an explanation, “Let us . . . [keep] our eyes fixed on Jesus . . . For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross . . . .” (Hebrews 12: 1-2). He knew that doing His Father’s will was the source of happiness. Christ’s limitless trust in God rebuilt the bridge between us and God that Adam and Eve’s lack of trust destroyed.
Jesus’ total trust in the Father makes it possible for us to totally trust in the Father, and then to take up our crosses. Our crosses are intersections of wills. When our personal preferences contradict what God asks or permits, we are faced with a personal cross. An example that I think most of us can understand is when we face a serious illness. Our initial reaction is that we would rather be healthy, but God has permitted this illness to come to us. This creates an intersection of wills; God’s will is going in one direction, and ours is going in another. If in that moment we turn to Christ’s cross, He will remind us, through His example and through that supreme expression of God’s love for us, that God is trustworthy. In Christ’s cross we can find the strength to trust that God knows what He is doing, and we embrace our cross.
Every cross that we experience in life is a chance to exercise trust in God and thereby rebuild the relationship that sin has ruptured. In fact, this is why God sends and permits crosses in our lives. He wants us to rehabilitate our trust in Him so that we can deepen our communion with Him and experience the fullness of life that He has promised us.
Today, as the Church reminds us of the intensity of Christ’s suffering, which is a sign of the intensity of His love for us, let us renew our trust in God. Let us ask for the strength we need to embrace our crosses out of love, as Christ did. Do not allow the Cross to just become a piece of jewelry or a wall decoration. As the Cross is the primary symbol of God’s love for us, let our embracing of the Cross, however it is manifested in our lives, be the primary symbol of our trusting love for God.
