April 2, 2010: Good Friday (C)
(Click left to hear audio of this homily)In 1989, at a Sunday mass at the Korean Catholic Church my sister and I--I was 10th grade in high school then--lined up at the back of the aisle to bring up the gifts during offertory. My parents were sitting near the front of the church, and they were looking back as we brought the gifts toward the front. My mother said, only a couple of weeks later lying in the hospital, how pitiful we looked that day at mass. When she saw us coming with the bread and the wine, she began to cry, she said. That mass was being said for her. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and some lumps were found in her breast as well. I can't describe what kind of emotions were going through me as I was approaching the priest with the gifts. I suppose the word 'numb' would be appropriate. Since I had little or no faith at that time, I did not know the significance of bringing up the gifts other than that a lot of people were looking at us, siblings, with a look of pity. A friend of mine that time asked me, "Is there anything that I can do for you, like laundry or like bring cooked meals?" It's when my friend asked me that question that a possibility that my mother was not going to be with us was made real to me.
A couple of days ago, I asked, "Lord, what would you like me to preach about on Good Friday," and as I prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, this memory of my mother's illness came back from 21 years ago. Sometimes it is hard to connect what Jesus did on His Cross with what's happening with our lives. "What does that cross have to do with me," we ask. And we wonder, "Why do we need to retrace the steps of the Stations of the Cross and to recite again the Passion narrative from the Gospel?" Therefore, some people prefer to celebrate only the Resurrection and the Glory of Our Lord. And you can see this in some churches where the crucified body of Jesus is missing from the cross because they want to focus on his resurrection and his victory over death.
To unravel the mystery of why we do what we do on Good Friday--namely, the Way of the Cross and the Good Friday liturgy--I want to elaborate on one of the shortest sentences that Jesus spoke in the Passion narrative: "I thirst." We can imagine how thirsty he was. He carried His Cross through the arduous path beginning from Pilate's praetorium all the way up to Golgotha or the Place of the Skull. Unlike marathons where volunteers hand out water bottles to runners, on the Way of the Cross, in the hands of the bystanders were hurtful words of ridicule and something heavy to throw at him. His thirst grew stronger each time as he fell under the heavy weight of the cross, but more so because there was no one to quench his thirst for kindness or compassion. How strange. Only few days prior, people flocked to him and followed him because he quenched their dying thirst for love. There were plenty of takers, but rarely any givers that day. Only a couple of days before he spoke the words, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." As the crowd looked on the Cross, did these 'friends' of his understood what he was doing for them? As they ridiculed him, "He saved others; he cannot save himself...Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him." (Matt 27:42) Yet for these poor 'friends' who were ungrateful and did not understand what he was doing for them, Jesus uttered, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)
And I count myself as one of those ungrateful and amnesiac 'friends' who ridiculed him from below the cross. Oh how many times it plays in my head the times I made fun of Christians, to those who showed kindness to those who inflicted pain on them, and to those who showed kindness to me. As I pondered about why Lord wanted me to use my memory of my mother's cancer to explain the mystery of Good Friday, it dawned on me how poorly and ungratefully I treated my mother up until her cancer, this mother who loved me and who sacrificed for me all her life. And it took her cancer for this poor son to realize what her absence would mean. The pain and suffering of her cancer then magnified my guilt and the need for forgiveness for my wrongdoings against this good mother whose life was about laying down her life for her children. Oh how I wished she would be freed from the cross of cancer, then! Yet, it would be another 6 years before I would recognize the Jesus on the cross as a friend who laid his life for me. Only then did I understand what St. Augustine wrote in his "Confessions":
I want to leave you with thoughts of one person who truly understood the great mystery of the words, "I thirst" of Jesus--Mother Teresa. She said,
"Let us try in a special way as closely as human heart can come to the Heart of Jesus and try to understand as much as possible Jesus' terrible pain caused to Him by our sins and this thirst for our love.
Good Friday is the day God spoke of His infinite thirst for each of us and for all His children, especially the poorest of the poor through His beloved Son, Jesus Christ dying on the Cross.
Thank God, Our Lady was there to understand fully the thirst of Jesus for love--she must have straight away said, "I satiate your thirst with my love and the suffering of my heart. Jesus, my Jesus, I love you."
How clear her total surrender, her loving trust must have satiated His thirst for love, for souls--that is why it is very important to keep very close to Our Lady as St. John and St. Mary Magadalen kept.
This is a time of greater love of greater sharing in His Passion. This is the time when Jesus in His suffering looks for one to comfort Him--as we read "I looked for one to comfort Me and I found none."
Let us deepen our knowledge of the thirst of Jesus on the Cross, in the Eucharist, and in every soul we meet, for this knowledge will help us to be holy like Jesus and Mary." (Mother Teresa)
[By the way, my mother is free of cancer now for 21 years. Praise God! - Fr. Paul]
