One of the most mysterious things about life is how closely sorrow and joy are connected. During the Triduum, these sacred days of which we right now find ourselves in the middle, are really about sorrow being transformed into joy.
Our high holy days started last evening with our celebration of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Our celebration included singing the Gloria, which we abandoned at the beginning of Lent.
Today, on Good Friday, we remember the Lord’s betrayal, passion, death, and burial. So, our joy, liturgically at least, turns to sorrow. Given this, why do we call this Friday “Good”? I remember as a kid of 10 or 11 growing up as a non-Catholic in a not-very-religious home, seeing it on the calendar, asking “What is Good Friday? This was in the days before the internet, Siri, or Google. Despite asking a few years in a row, nobody could tell me.
But I think what makes the Friday before Easter “Good” comes back to the mysterious relationship between joy and sorrow. Something I’ve taken to calling the “inverse property of redemption,” which holds that without crucifixion there can be no resurrection and without resurrection Jesus’ humiliating execution at the hands of the Roman imperium is just another state killing of a possibly troublesome and marginal person belonging to a conquered and marginal people.
What good comes from Good Friday? While some may take issue with this, the greatest good flowing from Good Friday is the Church. Just as God formed Eve from Adam’s side, Christ’s bride, the Church, was shaped from his side as he hung on the cross. This happened when the Roman soldier pierced the Lord’s side with a lance. The water that poured from Jesus’ wound is baptism and his blood is the Eucharist.
This is why the apostle Paul, in our epistle reading for last night’s Mass, insists that “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”1 Without proclaiming the Lord’s death, his resurrection doesn’t really make sense.
The Crucifixion, by Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, ca. 1675
For centuries in the Latin, or Western, Church the Veneration of the Cross- the fount of the Eucharist- took the place of Holy Communion. So, for centuries on Good Friday, the only day of the year on which the Latin Church does not celebrate Mass, Roman Catholics did not receive communion. It was not until later, with the influx of Christians from the East, that this changed. Taking place as it does after the Veneration of the Cross, the communion rite, even in our reformed liturgy, seems a little out-of-place in the unique liturgy of Good Friday.
Contemplating Baptism and Eucharist (Confirmation being closely linked to Baptism) flowing from the side of our crucified Lord should prompt us to look forward to tomorrow’s Paschal Vigil. Not only will our Elect and Candidates complete their Christian initiation and so be fully incorporated into Christ’s verum corpus- his true body, the Church, but those of us already baptized and members of Christ's Body will renew our baptismal promises.
Lent is a preparation for this renewal. Lent is an old English word meaning springtime. Spring is the time each year when we witness new life spring forth from what seemed dead. Lent is a time for us to die to ourselves, to seek, with the help of God’s grace, to rid ourselves of our own death-dealing tendencies and seek once again to fully live the new life we received when we died, were buried, and rose with Christ to new life through the waters of Baptism.
God is not a God of second chances. Being infinite, God is a God of countless chances. Each day, each moment presents you with a chance to turn to God.
When entered into with the proper disposition, Good Friday brings you face-to-face with yourself. It provides you with one more chance before Easter to confront those things that keep you from truly living and giving life to others. Good Friday also gives you the chance to bring your brokenness, your fears, your failures, your disappointments and your grief to Christ, and to lay these at the foot of his cross. This is like planting seeds that, once they die and germinate, watered by the fountain of grace that is Christ’s cross, will spring forth in new life.
Truly venerating the cross of Christ, for which you prepare by fasting and praying, is an act of hope, not of despair. After all, isn’t the most fundamental belief we have as Christians in the resurrection?
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