Homily – Good Friday

March 29, 2013   Cycle C

Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12      Hebrews 4:14-16,5:7-9   John 18:1 to 19:42

“He descended into hell.”  It is part of our Profession of Faith.  In His death, Christ descends into hell.  On one level, we hear those words as describing that mystical time and place between death and resurrection.

Jesus descends to that place where the good and just have lived since the time of Adam and brings these saints to the dwelling place of God. 

But Jesus’ descent into hell may be more real than we think.  In His death, Jesus experiences the hell of feeling alienated from God.  He enters the hell of betrayal and denial.  He is condemned to the hell of rejection.  He is abandoned to hell by friends and colleagues who run away from Him. 

Jesus’ descent into hell is the opening of God’s love.  The author and theologian, Fr. Ron Rolheiser, has written in one of his books, “Jesus’ descent into hell is first and foremost a doctrine about love.  God’s love for us and the power of that love to go all lengths to descend to the depths and to let go through virtually every barrier in order to redeem the wounded, huddled,  frightened, paranoid, alienated, and unfree humanity.”

Fr. Ron goes on to write, “By dying as He did, Christ shows us that He loves us in such a way that He can descend into our private hells.  His love is so empathetic and compassionate that it can penetrate all barriers that we construct out of hurt and fear, and enter right into our despair and hopelessness.”

We have gathered here on this Good Friday, and we are confronted with the tombs and graves in which we bury ourselves and struggle to rise from. 

Last weekend, on Palm Sunday, and then again today, we read the Passion Narrative.  This time from the Gospel of John where Jesus seems to be in charge of His own destiny.  But each of the Scriptures that are recorded for us of the Passion, remind us of the hell of fear, the hell of selfishness, the hell of anger, the hell of despair, into which we plunge.  But it is in the Cross of Christ that we find new life.  It is in the love that Christ exhibits to the end, that He shows us the way up and out from our hopeless hells and locked tombs.

There is not a private hell, or tomb of brokenness, depression, fear, or bitterness that God’s love cannot and will not descend into – and break down and open us.   Tomorrow will tell.

And so we pray today as we gather to venerate the Cross of Jesus that the God of life will open our spirits to take His hand as He calls us out of the graves that we have made.  And that the God of hope will move us beyond the pain of our own Good Friday crucifixions, and fix our souls on the promise of Christ’s Resurrection.  And that through the God of compassion, the Cross of Jesus will become for us the tree of new life; the life that liberates us from the hells of our lives and lifts us up to the Eternal Life of Jesus the Christ!! Amen.  Amen.Msgr. Tom Adrians, Pastor Christ the King