Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion
Calvary, where Jesus died
“But the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.” As we come to this Good Friday that was, at its face value, anything but good, this line can echo in our hearts and minds. “But the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.” Why? Why was God the Father pleased to crush Jesus? Why let Jesus undergo the cruel agony of the crucifixion: the unspeakable pain as nail pierces flesh; the utter humiliation of being naked on the cross; the gasps for breath as His lungs filled with fluid? This seems too cruel for the one Jesus told us would run out to meet us when we had been prodigal, wasteful, with our inheritance; for the one who goes after the one sheep who has gone astray while leaving the other ninety-nine. It almost seems sadistic.
We have no doubt that this was the Father’s will. How can we be so sure? Because it happened. God the Father never allows anything to happen that is outside His will. We hear this in the Gospel of John time and time again, when the authorities want to arrest Jesus, but He always seems to slip past them, until the Garden of Gethsemane. Perhaps it wasn’t God’s original plan. The great Catholic author and liturgist, Msgr. Romano Guardini, speculates that the desire of God was for the Chosen People to accept Jesus as the Messiah, in which case perhaps God could have saved us in another way. But God, who stands outside time and could see what would happen because it is as the present to Him, knew that Jesus would be rejected, and would have to die the terrible death we enter into today.
But why? We can know that God allowed it, but the question still remains. Why? The only answer to that question is that God loves us. We heard it in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but might have eternal life.” God’s love for us was so strong, that not even the threat of annihilation could hinder it. We know Jesus struggled in His human nature, as anyone would, to embrace what looked like defeat, and what was certainly going to be painful. But Jesus, the Icon of the Love of the Father, could do nothing other than express that Love which He is by the shedding of His Precious Blood, the Blood of a truly unblemished Lamb.
Did we deserve love? No. A million times no. But God loved us anyway. How many times had we broken our covenant with God at the point of the crucifixion? How many times would the members of God’s Church continue to break it afterwards? And yet, God loved us anyway. We all have been the unfaithful spouse in the marriage covenant with our Divine Spouse. But God did not divorce us; He didn’t walk away. He loved us more, giving not just His exhortations and example to return to that love, but even giving His Blood, even giving His last breath out of love for us. As the hymn sings, “What wondrous love is this!”
What is our response to that love? What is our response to that gift of all gifts, the gift that can never be fully repaid, a gift which we have no right to receive, but which God offers us anyway? If your husband brought home a winning Powerball ticket worth hundreds of millions of dollars, what would be your response? If your wife told you that she had just inherited a Caribbean island with a mansion, the plane to fly there, with unlimited fuel to power the plane, and unlimited food and drink, what would be your response? This gift is better than both of those combined, times infinity.
And yet, we still cry out–by our lack of love towards each other, by our spiteful words, by our lack of desire to spend time with Jesus, by our disobedience to God’s law–“Crucify him! Crucify him!” We still pound in those nails each time we sin. We still pierce His side when we decide that something, anything, is better than spending time with Jesus in the Mass just for one hour once or twice per week.
“But the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.” God the Father knew, as only He could, that this was the only way for salvation to truly be accomplished. This was the only way to prove just how much He loves us. And though the cost was great; though the agony was beyond that of any other person, since no other person was Life Incarnate; though all but a few gave in to cowardice and wouldn’t even be with Him in the last moments, God the Father allowed His Son to die; Jesus willingly, lovingly accepted death. As we come to venerate the Cross: remember what Jesus did for love of you; remember how you have led Jesus here; remember the love we have rejected by our sins.
But also remember: God loves us anyway.
A blog to communicate the fruits of my own contemplation of Scripture for most of the Sundays and Holy Days of the Liturgical Year. By this blog I hope that you can draw closer to the Triune God and see how the Word of God continues to be living and effective in your own lives.