Word to the Wise
Friday, April 19, 2019 - Good Friday of the Lord's Passion - ABC
[Isa 52:13-53:12; Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42]He was spurned and avoided by people, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. [Isaiah]
The service of the Lord's Passion on Good Friday is a profound experience for those who enter into it. Anytime one is in the presence of a person who is suffering tremendously, there is a mix of feelings of compassion and perhaps complicity along with grief if the suffering person is someone we love. For their sake and our own we just want it to end somehow! What could possibly be "redemptive" about it? The incredibly prescient words of Isaiah's fourth song of the Suffering Servant are haunting and challenging. If any of the Beloved Congregation are unable to attend the Good Friday service, I hope you can simply read and reflect on Isaiah's words today.
The part of the service in which the cross is unveiled and venerated is a powerful reminder of the universality of suffering. Who among us can escape it? The cross is a reminder to us that Jesus took (and takes) on our sufferings and we are united with him in compassion. It is the cross that is the universal symbol of Christianity, not the empty tomb! We are invited to kiss the cross as an intimate gesture of solidarity not only with Jesus in his suffering, but he in ours!
We Dominicans know well the Fra Angelico image of St. Dominic, alone at the bottom of the cross, embracing it. This is not just a pious picture but an invitation on Good Friday and every day to a union with Jesus and all those who suffer that transcends our individual sufferings. There is no other day like this one. AMEN