Good Friday 2019.
Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, today we are called to consider an absolutely
essential aspect of our Catholic -- which means universal -- Christian
faith. We should not, and indeed cannot,
identify Christian values with those currently prevalent in our Western part of
the world, because our present, secularized, Western culture is most seriously
wrong, for example, in the exaggerated emphasis and value it puts on living
long to experience and enjoy all that life has to offer. Because of this fixation on satisfying our
human capacity for pleasure and fulfilment
Western society has come to regard death as the end of everything that is
desirable, and consequently views death, with all its concomitant forms of
suffering, as something to be avoided above all else. It is time, therefore, for modern, secular, self-satisfied
and non-believing, Westerners to learn from the attitude of other great cultures,
in this case of Japan and Islam – yes, even from some former world-war and some
present world-turmoil opponents – who believed and believe that death can be regarded as a possible gateway to
future glory, and who can, therefore, gladly embrace death for what they
consider to be a worthwhile cause.
Now,
although we Catholics and Christians could never accept the idea of political
convictions being a worthy cause for deliberate self destruction, and while the
manner in which certain former
adversaries deliberately chose to kill themselves and die along with their opponents alarmed and amazed us; and although the notion of heavenly glory so
frequently imagined by simple ISIS enthusiasts and proclaimed by manipulative
leaders, is both degrading and earthly, nevertheless, the willingness of
members of those two great cultures – Japan and Islam -- to sacrifice
themselves for what they – rightly or wrongly -- saw or see as an ideal or
belief, is something both truly human and worthy of admiration.
We
Catholics can never resort to self-inflicted death, to self-destruction, as a
direct means to express our hatred or promote our cause, because death cannot
be of our free and deliberate choosing; nevertheless, as
Christians, we are called to become so freed from the fear of death, to be
inspired with such love for what is divinely beautiful and true, that we can wholeheartedly embrace death when
it is encountered for witnessing to Christ and expressing love for God or
neighbour. Today, however, our
secularized Western societies are smothering Christians aspirations and
dragging down believers into fearing death above all, something to be feared
and avoided or at least delayed, at whatever cost; while saving life – except of course the lives of aborted
infants – justifies almost anything.
Today,
we Catholics and Christians need very much to remember that we celebrate GOOD FRIDAY, the day when Jesus, our
Redeemer, Lord and Saviour, embraced death for love of His Father and sinful
mankind.
Yes,
People of God, today we Catholics celebrate
Jesus’ death; and we must never allow
ourselves to be led astray into mourning
Jesus’ death. We embrace, rejoice in,
Jesus’ death, Jesus’ way of dying, Jesus’ use
of death, for us; we lament, we mourn, we weep, for mankind’s (including
individuals like you and me) killing of, hatred for, self-centred disregard of,
Jesus, His truth and His love. Jesus’
death we love and celebrate; it is our -- and mankind’s -- killing of Him and
His that we both loath and mourn.
Our
modern society in this much-changed country once known as Great Britain has
come to admire mourning: many people today seem to think it good to say they cannot forget; forget what? Of course, they cannot forget nor could anyone
ever ask them to forget their loved ones whose memory deserves to be
cherished. However, what they should
learn to forget, to put behind them, is their
loss, which too many mourn, year after year after year! In that mourning there can indeed be sincere heart-break;
but also, there is far too much self-love;
and such mourning is not for our Christian remembrance and celebration of Good
Friday, for it does not proclaim any good.
Today,
I say, we Catholics and Christians are called to celebrate Jesus’ dying, Jesus’
embrace of death, for us. As for
mourning, we mourn most certainly our own sinfulness, so like, indeed so
one-with, that of those who actually killed Jesus two-thousand years ago; BUT
our mourning compels us to tackle our sinfulness; we can hope and must aspire
to overcome our sinfulness and thereby transfigure our mourning, by God’s grace.
Looking
now, on this Good Friday, at the crucified Jesus, we recognize that, for Him,
death was not the end but rather the climax of His life; it was not the loss of
all that He had loved, but rather the sublime moment when He was at last able
to give supreme expression to the love which had filled His life. Jesus said, “It is finished”: that is, first
of all, He was aware and content that He had completed the task His Father had
given Him when sending Him into this world.
What was it that was finished?
Not simply the work of our redemption, because the full fruit of that
has still to be gathered in over the ages by His disciples working in the power
of His Spirit in the Church and in the world.
What then was already fully and finally finished as Jesus breathed His
last?
It
was Jesus’ constant and ever-more-consuming desire to give Himself entirely to
the Father in His earthly life; to give true and full expression -- as much as
the limits of His human body would allow Him -- to the consuming love He had
for His Father (Luke 12:50):
I have a baptism to undergo, and how
distressed I am until it is accomplished!
Our
Good Friday Jesus was finally able to say, “Father, into your hands I commend
my Spirit” with ineffable peace and joy, before He then deliberately breathing
His last. Life did not just slip
listlessly out of His grasp: He wholeheartedly gave over His life in total
trust to His Father. This final and total
gift of Himself to the Father was, in that way, the fullest expression He had
ever been able to give of the love that filled Him.
For
us Catholics and Christians therefore, death may even be supremely desirable, and
can and should, most certainly, be hopefully reverenced and humbly embraced, because
it offers us also a supreme opportunity to express our love for the Father, our
trust in Jesus, our hope in the Spirit.
