Good Shepherd Catholic Parish

Good Friday, 29 March 2024 (Season A)

          Peace be with you on this solemn second evening of our Catholic Triduum – Good Friday.  We’ve just listened to the Passion Reading from John’s Gospel and so here we are focusing, specifically on the Crucified Jesus.  We have come here to actually venerate the very instrument of his Passion, suffering, and death – the wooden Cross.  In fact, we Catholics are often criticized for displaying that most central symbol of our very own faith, the Crucifix, visually depicting the bloodied corpse of Jesus hanging on that wooden Cross.  I’m reminded of a letter I once read by a so-called, fallen away Catholic, to a popular Catholic website and the response to his letter.  The writer said, “You Catholics need to get Jesus off the Cross and preach the Resurrection.”  The Catholic website responded by directing him to the Bible, specifically, Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians.  They compared one of Paul’s greatest preaching failures to one of his greatest preaching successes.  In Acts 17:16-34 Paul’s preaching emphasis was the Resurrection when he spoke to the Greeks in Athens.  Verse thirty-two tells us however, “Some of them began to scoff.”  Consequently, history reveals he never began a church there.  Nor, did Paul ever send one of his celebrated letters to the Athenians.

          It would seem; however, the Holy Spirit must have inspired Paul to burn his Athens homilies as he moved on to one of his greatest Christian conversion successes in Corinth.  His plan B would later be explained in his two letters to the church he founded in Corinth.  Paul wrote; “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, the power of God and wisdom of God,,, I am resolved among you to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.”  Wow, now there is a clear message.  So, why would Paul change his preaching focus from the Resurrected Jesus to the Crucified Jesus?  The answer lies with another word Paul used, perhaps more eloquently than any other New Testament writer in 1 Corinthians 13, and that word is love.  St. Augustan went as far to suggest that to even talk about the love of God without meditating on the Crucifix was a mockery. 

          Next time you run into a Christian friend who cannot seem to grasp the message of the Crucifix, ask to see his or her Bible, it shouldn’t matter which translation, and turn to John’s Gospel Chapter 1.  Read this; “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.”  Then find one of those beautiful deep space pictures from the James Webb telescope, or a picture of a newborn baby, or even a microscopic image of a human DNA strand and then hold up a Crucifix and simply say, “There hung the Word.”

          My friends, I don’t pretend to understand the Blessed Trinity but neither did smart guys like Augustan or Thomas Aquinas.  So, with my own limited intellect, when I read the Prologue of John’s Gospel, look at one of those pictures of the Universe, and then meditate on the Crucifix, it takes my breath away.  I must ask, “How could the unlimited creator of the Universe do that for me?”  Of course, we all know the answer but on nights like this a simple word like love seems so inadequate.  In the end I must agree with good old Saint Augustan.  To talk about the love of God and not meditate on the Crucifix is a mockery.