Meditations: Good Friday
Friday April 14 am: 95, 22. pm 40, 54 Gen 22:1-14 1 Pet 1:10-20 am: Jn 13:36-38 pm: Jn 19:38-42
GOOD FRIDAY
LITURGICAL THEME FOR THE DAY: On this day, we see the Son of God Himself, hanging on the cross on account of our sins. We are not only witnesses to the Holy Passion of our Good Savior, but we become participants in the story of our salvation. At this moment, by His death, the Lord has redeemed us from our sins. The Lord has also cast the final judgment over, Satan, over sin and over death. He has declared them powerless before His almighty throne. The Lamb of God appears throughout each hour in a different form. During the First hour, He is tried and convicted under false accusations and testimony. During the Third hour, He was bruised and suffered Lamb – whipped, spat upon, and mocked for our sakes. During the Sixth Hour, He was crucified for our sakes. In the Ninth Hour, He gave up His soul to the Father. In the Eleventh, He was stabbed with the spear. Finally in the twelfth, He was buried in the tomb.
MEDITATION OF THE DAY :The summary message of Good Friday is that Jesus was condemned, crucified, bled and died. The Cross is the great paradox of Christianity. More than a few people have asked me over the years why the Church focuses so prominently and persistently on the Crucifix. But behind these scenarios lie what gave him the greatest agony, namely, the denial by those he taught and healed and the deliberate denial and betrayal by Judas and Peter his disciples. Imagine what Jesus was feeling when Judas walked out that door and darkness fell. Imagine how he felt, when he looked to Peter to stay by him, and in spite of his earlier promise to do so, declined and denied him. What a suffering?
Peter, while much loved by the Lord, and having been privy to the exchange regarding Judas, still doesn’t seem to get it! His desire for ‘insider knowledge’ super – cedes his desire to simply listen to and obey the Lord. This leads him to an offer he would not have been able to keep, as his later actions attest. With knowledge aforethought, Christ provides an important lesson in foretelling Peter’s fear once the reality of Christ’s mission is revealed.
Like Peter, we can see only what Judas did but fail to realize that we deny and betray him in so many ways: we doubt some of his teachings and pick and choose them, we deny Him our time – we have time for everything but for God. Jesus is worth more than billions but Judas sold him on discount at 30 pieces of silver. Like Judas we sell Jesus at a discount when we equate him to humans and prefer human laws to the laws of God, when we receive the Eucharist without going to Confession, when we are ashamed to talk about him before our relations and friends or pray in a public places.
PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, who by the Passion of Christ your Son, our Lord, abolished the death inherited from ancient sin by every succeeding generation, grant that just as, being conformed to him,we have borne by the law of nature the image of the man on earth, so by the sanctification of grace we may bear the image of the Son of Man. Amen
ANCIENT WISDOM/PRESENT GRACE: : “We do not attach any intrinsic value to the Cross; this would be sinful and idolatrous. Our veneration is referred to Him who died upon it.” —James Cardinal Gibbons
HOLY WEEK DISCIPLINE: Unplug” from noon on Good Friday until noon on Holy Saturday.
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