March 29, 2013: Good Friday

As I began to ponder the Holy Week services, I thought about the traditional hymn that is sung on Good Friday: ‘Behold, behold, the wood of the Cross, on which is hung our salvation. O come, let us adore.’  Then suddenly I had a flashback in my mind to just three months ago when we sang a different song: ‘O come let us adore him, O come let us adore him, O come let us adore him Christ the lord.’  I realized that while we gather on Good Friday to remember the events of the Passion and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that His passion began in a tiny manager in Bethlehem, Israel.  Jesus who was born in a humble state in a manger died in a very humble state as our king upon the wood of the cross. God humbled himself to become man for one reason: To die for our sins. As I reflected on the connection of the wood of the manger and the wood of the cross, I thought about the struggles, the suffering, the rejection that Blessed Mother and St. Joseph faced from the time of the annunciation up and through the time that Jesus was born. Isn’t that just what happens in our life… things don’t go exactly as we plan. The fears and pains of not being in control are real. The urge to fight for control is real. Anger and despair weave themselves into our lives. They are the finite perspective on an infinite reality. We take part in the passion of Jesus not by fighting our circumstances but by trying to discern and follow God’s will and purpose for our lives.

For us to identify with the suffering of Christ leads us outward, not inward and we see redemption is for all, not an elite group. As we begin to understand that His cross was our cross, we move beyond our personal concerns.  The cross itself then represents not death or despair but the outpouring of selfless love, the ultimate gift of oneself for the salvation of others: death for life.

The cross of Christ must be touched by you and me personally, individually. Life through death – an everyday dying to myself brings us life. Today we have the opportunity to touch and kiss the very wood on which Jesus hung and the very nails that pierced Jesus’ hands and feet. The cross that we will venerate shortly has the relics of the True Cross—a sliver of the actual cross found by St. Helena in the year 326 while she was on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She also found the nails that fastened the body of Jesus to the Cross. The nails on the cross that we will venerate were made with filings from the original nails. As we touch and kiss the True Cross, we ask Jesus to give us the courage to carry our own crosses with patience and perseverance.
 

Today is a prime time for us to reflect on what we have been given – what Jesus has done for us, in his own life and death and what he continues to do for us today. Behold the wood of the Cross, on which is hung our salvation!