April 10, 2009: Good Friday (B) The Lord's Passion

Sometimes after mass some parishioners come up to me and ask, "Father Paul, do you want to hear a joke related to your homily?" I say, "Go ahead." Sometimes I get the joke, sometimes I let out a nervous laugh, which means I didn't get it. What makes a good joke? When I googled "How to make a good joke," I came upon the following information. First of all, what makes a joke? It involve a set-up with the subject and facts, and a punch line that highlights the irony. So you got to have a good set-up. You want to build up the tension slowly in the set-up; give a little time for people to get on board with what you've told them so far. And finally, hit them with a strong punch line.

So was God trying to be funny with us in what happened to His Son on Good Friday? From the beginning pages of the Book of Genesis, Heavenly Father began his great setup. He gave a foreshadow of what Jesus would accomplish. Addressing the serpent, God said, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." Yesterday at Holy Thursday mass, we heard from the Book of Exodus how God was going to personally liberate the Israelites from their bondage. And today from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah we hear, "See, my servant shall prosper,he shall be raised high and greatly exalted...because of him kings shall stand speechless." So God was building up the tension slowly throughout history. Then God hit us with his punch line. His Son dies a humiliating death of a criminal...and no one laughed. All of his disciples, including us, said, "we don't get the joke." Yes there were some who were there on Calvary who were laughing and jeering, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross." (Mk 15:29-30)

Wasn't something great suppose to happen? Shouldn't this suppose to look more like a great victory after a presidential election with balloons, cheers, and victory speeches? Yet all we got was a great let down, a great disappointment--a limp dead body in the arms of his sorrowful mother. How is this dead guy suppose to help me, 2000 years later?

God certainly knows how to use irony in the punch line. The irony is that the man who didn't strike back at those who struck him was greater than them. Prophet Isaiah said today, "Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth;like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers,he was silent and opened not his mouth...(here comes the irony) Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,our sufferings that he endured,while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses,crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,by his stripes we were healed."

We still don't get how all this works. Well, we need an example. On my Blog website, I included a video clip of a story on a priest named Fr. Maximilian Kolbe. He was a Polish priest who was arrested and sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp during Nazi occupation. One day, one of the prisoner escaped from the camp. The Nazi soldiers as a reparation randomly picked 10 men to be starved to death. One of those man named Francis (Franciszek Gajowniczek) protested because he still had his family. Then, Fr. Kolbe stepped up and volunteered himself to take his place. The Nazi soldiers found it amusing that a Catholic priest would volunteer, so they let him take his place. Fr. Kolbe was last to die out of that group of 10 from starvation. But to the last moment of his breath, he took care of the dying men. On October 10, 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Fr. Kolbe. And present at that canonization was Francis, the man who lived because a priest chose to take upon himself another person's death sentence. In 1994 Francis visited the St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church of Houston, where he told his translator that "so long as he ... has breath in his lungs, he would consider it his duty to tell people about the heroic act of love by Maximilian Kolbe."

Isn't this why we are here on Good Friday before the cross? So long as we have breath in our lungs, we consider it our duty to tell people about the heroic act of love by Our Blessed Lord.