Crucifixion was a cruel method of execution. The movie “The Passion of Christâ€, starring Mel Gibson, is widely regarded as the most accurate and realistic description of the cruelty of crucifixion.
The very idea of Good Friday causes us concern. In fact, we all have a problem with the Cross. Religious-minded people want miracles and power. Intellectually minded people want wisdom and truth. The problem is that both his power and wisdom led Jesus to the Cross, a brutal denial of everything he had done before. Those who had seen his power wondered why he seemed powerless in his greatest need. Those who saw his intelligence wondered how someone so smart could miscalculate so badly.
Jesus knew what was coming. He was conscious that his life, his words and his miracles could only lead him to death on the cross.
We can easily see and identify all that is mean and cheap in human behavior in the story of the cross and we can also say that this kind of attitudes is also what makes ourselves suffer in life. Those are the 4 nails of Jesus on the cross, and those are also the 4 nails that cause all kind of suffering to us all:
- Betrayal: Judas sells Jesus for thirty silver coins, and Peter denies knowing him and the disciples run away.
- Violence and cruelty: The soldiers hit him and then ask “who hit you?” The people want him crucified.
- Egoism: Pilate washes his hands, even knowing that Jesus is innocent, because he does not want Jesus to become his problem. The leader of the Jews says it is convenient that a man dies, because he wants to avoid a problem for all of them.
- Contempt and sneer by everybody when they see him crucified: He said he was the Son of God; let him come down from the cross.
We can say that today we can see Jesus defeated, abandoned and abused
And yet, we venerate the Cross and worship an executed man as the Son of God. This is not easy to understand and even more difficult to accept. It is the scandal of the Cross, because, as Tertullian said, “we worship a God that dies.”
What is it that makes us think different? What is it that makes us believe that the ultimate defeat becomes the ultimate victory?
The answer to these important questions is that we know that Friday is only the road to Sunday, that the absurdity of the Cross makes only sense from the faith in the Resurrection.
And then, everything makes sense! The violent death of Jesus is just the culmination of this mission and his preaching. He came to bring a new order, the Kingdom of God, based on love. He came to live and die for us.
His passion and death on the Cross is not at all a sign of defeat, but a sign of fidelity to the will of God. “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heavenâ€: This sentence is really fulfilled on the Cross. “This is why I was born and why I came to this world, to be witness to the truthâ€. Jesus remains loyal and obedient to God to the end, up to death.
So the passion and death is the climax of Jesus fidelity to the Father, and the resurrection is the sign of the Father’s fidelity towards Jesus.
What can we learn from this today?
What God offers us all is first the Cross. The earliest believers called the Cross “the wisdom of God and power of God†(I Cor 1:23-24). Easter is indeed about the empty tomb. But first, it’s about the Cross. This was true for Jesus and must be true also for all of us.
The sentence of Jesus “whoever wants to follow me, has to carry his cross to follow me†has full meaning today. We are not invited to be masochists, happy to suffer, but to change our attitude towards life, imitating Jesus, trusting God as Jesus did.
Sure, it doesn’t always feel this way. It is not easy to trust even God with our lives. Even Jesus, on the Cross said: Why have you forsaken me? But he immediately said: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
How can those two go together? Even at his death, Jesus showed us how to trust the Father beyond the circumstances. He knew the Father’s promise of Resurrection, but death still lay ahead of him. And death was still death, even for Jesus. It was his trust in the Father’s promise that caused him to wager everything he had: his very life. As a man, Jesus is our model on how to trust the Father.
We must also imitate Jesus in committing our lives for others. Be sure than we make a stand for justice and peace, or the rights of others. The established powers will also stand against us, as they did with Jesus, and will make our life miserable or even dangerous.
We will continue with our liturgy, which still has two main parts for us: the universal prayer, in which we are going to show our commitment towards the rest of world in the form of a prayer, regardless of the fact they are powerful or powerless, believers or not believers. And then we will venerate the Cross. I hope that as we come to venerate it, we also make a decision to accept whatever cross we may encounter in our lives, and accept it as the only way to resurrection and salvation.
José Angel López Legido, OP
St. Dominic’s Priory, Macau