Homily — March 21, 2008
Good Friday
by Fr. Dan Donovan (March 21, 2008)
In the account of the Passion that we just heard, Pilate at one point brings Jesus wearing a crown of thorns and a purple robe before the people and declares “Here is the man.” By this time Jesus has been betrayed, denied, abandoned, condemned, mocked, abused and beaten. It is almost as if Pilate is asking, “Have we not now done enough?” The answer that comes back is “no.” He must still be made to carry his cross, be nailed to it, and die on it.
The Passion of Jesus is in a very real sense the passion of humanity. Over the centuries and perhaps especially over the last 100 years, untold numbers of human beings have been betrayed and condemned, abandoned and mocked, abused and put to death. It is as if the phrase “Behold the man,” really means “Behold humanity.”
Jesus once asked his disciples, who people thought he was. He then asked them “Who do you say that I am?” The answer to this question is the key to today’s liturgy and its meaning for us. Many today, including many scholars and writers, don’t know what to make of Jesus. They think of him as a prophet or rabbi, as a great moral teacher or social revolutionary. The church and the liturgy identify with Peter when he declared in the name of the disciples, “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the answer of faith. It is an answer that enables us to see dimensions of the story of the Passion that we otherwise could not see.
The biblical God is a God who cares, a God who becomes involved in human life. He reaches out over the gulf that arrogance, sin and self-destructiveness have dug between us and him and draws us back into his friendship. Christianity is a religion of salvation and forgiveness, of healing and life.
As today’s second reading reminds us, Jesus, although he is the Son of God, became like us in all things but sin. He took on our life and lived it to the full. What the Passion reveals is the extent to which Jesus, and in him, God himself, entered into and embraced all aspects of our life including those that are the most negative and frightening. Over the centuries artists have portrayed Jesus in various situations and modes of dress. Intuitively they were relating him and his suffering to their own people and time. In him we see ourselves.
In Marks’s gospel the last words of Jesus on the cross are, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” It is almost as if Jesus experienced that absence of God, that utter void, that death at times seems to represent for us.
According to Luke, Jesus died saying, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” The experience of utter desolation, Luke is telling us, is not incompatible with trusting self-abandonment into the abyss of darkness which is the light of God.
Good Friday leads to Easter. Its proclamation that God raised Jesus to the fullness of life affirms that suffering and death are not the last word on human life. In passing from death to life Jesus became the first born of many sisters and brothers. He goes before us both in the courage and fidelity with which he embraced all that is negative in our lives and in his experience of the triumph and joy of Easter.
We can say of the risen Christ as much as of Jesus on the cross, “Behold the man,” “Behold humanity.” In him our faith in life and its ultimate meaning is renewed. In his self-giving unto death he opened for us the way to life.