April 10, 2009 Cycle B
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Hebrews 4:14-16,5:7-9
John 18:19
Late in the afternoon a teenager sneaks into a back pew. He drops his backpack, unplugs his I pod, stuffs his basketball behind the kneeler. His aloofness and sullenness mask his feeling of being overwhelmed by living in that strange land between childhood and adulthood. Trying to meet the expectations of teachers to be scholar, his coaches to be a champion, and his classmates to be cool. In the quiet darkness he sits and prays simply, “Lord, it’s me, Joe.”
In another part of the Church an exhausted businessman sinks into his seat. It has been a horrible day – he had to let five people go in his small agency. He had no choice: business is drying up. He did everything he could to keep them on; he offered severance pay and extended benefits; still he feels like the worse person whoever lived. In the nightmare that he is struggling through, he prays, “Help me keep it together.”
And in front of the statue of the Mother of God, a woman sits fingering her rosary. The Aves fall silently from her lips – but her thoughts are elsewhere: another confrontation with her daughter, the illness of her mother, the growing distance between her and her husband. She stops her beads, sinks to the floor and cries, “Lord, I’m not sure I can go on.”
Many times we find ourselves coming to Jesus in the middle of our darkest nights seeking consolation, direction, and comfort, and even hope.
On this day of remembrance of the cost of Jesus’ laying His life down for us, we come to know that it is by His grace that Christ can transform our darkness nights into the morning light of hope. We know that it is by God’s wisdom that He can transfigure our Good Friday despairs into the new Easter happiness. We know that by Christ’s compassion He can heal our broken spirits into hearts that are made whole again.
The beauty of entering Good Friday with our crosses is that Jesus opens His arms wide to receive all we offer from the nagging pain of arthritic joints to a long endured grief, Jesus in this final gesture of death wants us near Him. He is like us in all things but sin. He is like us in pain, the suffering, grief and dying.
Because of Good Friday we will never stand alone in our personal crucifixions. The Cross before us is the great sign of hope. In the companionship of the Communion of Saints, we walk up the hill and we stand at the Cross. The Cross is for us the sacred tree in our midst. It is the source of hope for our defeated beings; Grace for our battered souls; Sustenance for our starving spirits. It is in the Cross of Jesus Christ that we all realize the possibilities for healing, forgiveness, reconciliation, transformation, recreation.
As we come forward then to venerate the Cross, the Sacred Tree, may we recognize that Christ who gave His life on the Cross be a constant source of life and love for all of us who come today to stand in its shadow. May this Cross on this Good Friday be our gathering place. May our signs of respect for it, express our gratitude, as well as all of our accepted trials before our Crucified Savior.
Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom Adrians, Pastor Christ the King