The Mystery of The Cross — Good Friday

PRESENCE OF GOD – O Jesus, permit me to penetrate

with You into the depths of the mystery of the Cross.

MEDITATION
POINT 1. Good Friday is the day which invites us more
than any other to “enter into the thicket of the trials
and pains … of the Son of God” (John of the Cross,
Spiritual Canticle first redaction, 35,9), and not only
with the abstract consideration of the mind, but also
with the practical disposition of the will to accept
suffering voluntarily, in order to unite and assimilate
ourselves to the Crucified. By suffering with Him, we
shall understand His sufferings better and have a
better comprehension of His love for us, for “the
purest suffering brings with it the most intimate and
the purest understanding” (ibid., 36,12); and “no one
feels more deeply in his heart the Passion of Christ than one who has suffered something
similar” (Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book II, Chapter 12, Paragraph 4). With
these dispositions let us accompany our Lord during His last day on earth.
The atrocious martyrdom, which within a few hours will torture His body, has not yet
begun, and yet the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Olives marks one of the most
sorrowful moments of His Passion, one which best reveals the bitter sufferings of His
soul. His most sacred soul finds itself immersed in inexpressible anguish; it is extreme
abandonment and desolation, without the slightest consolation, either from God or from
man. The Savior feels the weight of the enormous burden of all the sins of mankind; He,
the Innocent One, sees Himself covered with the most execrable crimes, and made, as it
were, the enemy of God and the target of the infinite justice which will punish all our
wickedness in Him. Of course, as God, Jesus never ceased, even in the most painful
moments of His Passion, to be united to His Father; but as man, He felt Himself rejected
by Him, “struck by God and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4). This explains the utter anguish of His
spirit, much more sorrowful than the dreadful physical sufferings which await Him;
explains the cruel agony which made Him sweat blood; explains His complaint, “My soul
is sorrowful even unto death” (Mt 26:38). Whereas before He had so ardently desired His
Passion, now that His humanity finds itself facing the hard reality of the fact, deprived of
the sensible help of the divinity, which seems not only to withdraw but even more, to be
angry with Him, Jesus groans: “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me!”
But this anguished cry of human nature is immediately lost in that of the perfect
conformity of Christ’s will to the Father’s: “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”
(Mt 26:39).
POINT 2. The Agony in the Garden is followed by the treacherous kiss of Judas, the arrest,
the night passed in the interrogations by the high priests and insults from the soldiers
who strike Jesus, spit in His face and blindfold Him, while in the outer court, Peter is
denying Him. At dawn they commence anew the questionings and accusations; the going
back and forth from one tribunal to another begins – from Caiphas to Pilate, from Pilate
to Herod, and back again to Pilate – followed by the horrible scourging and the crowing
with thorns. Finally, clothed as a mock king, the Son of God is presented to the mob
which cries out: “Away with this man, and release unto us Barabbas”; for Jesus, the
Savior, the crowd can only shout: “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” (Luke 23:18-21). Loaded
down with the wood for His torture, Jesus is led away to Calvary where He is crucified
between two thieves. These terrible physical and mental sufferings reach their climax
when the Savior, in agony on the Cross, utters the cry: “My God, My God, why hast Thou
forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46).
Here again we are in the presence of the inner struggle which tortures the soul of Christ,
and now accompanies, with rapid crescendo, the intense increase of His physical
sufferings. Jesus had said to His Apostles at the Last Supper, in speaking of His
approaching Passion: “Behold, the hour cometh… [when] you shall be scattered… and
shall leave Me alone; yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (John 16:32).
Union with the Father is everything to Jesus; it is His life and His strength, His comfort
and His joy. If men desert Him, the Father is always with Him, and that is sufficient for
Him. This fact fives us a better understanding of the intensity of His sufferings when, in
the course of His Passion, the Father withdraws from Him. Yet, even in His agony and
death on the Cross, Jesus is always God and therefore always indissolubly united to the
Father. However, He has taken upon Himself the heavy burden of our sins, which stand
like a moral barrier between Him and the Father. Although personally united to the
Word, His humanity is, by a miracle, deprived of all divine comfort and support, and feels
instead the weight of all the malediction due to sin: “Christ,” says St. Paul, “has redeemed
us from the curse… being made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). Here we touch the most
profound depths of the Passion of Jesus, the most atrocious bitterness which He
 embraced for our salvation. Yet, even in the
midst of such cruel torments, the last words of
Jesus are an expression of total abandonment:
“Father, into Thy Hands I commend My spirit”
(Luke 23:46). Thus Jesus, who willed to taste to
the dregs all that is bitter for man in suffering
and dying, teaches us to overcome the anxieties
and anguish caused in us by sorrow and death, by acts of complete submission to the will
of God and trustful abandonment into His hands. [Jesus, I trust in you!]
COLLOQUY
“O Christ, Son of God, as I contemplate the great sufferings You endured for us on the
Cross, I hear You saying to my soul: ‘It is not in jest that I have loved you!’ These words
open my eyes, and I see clearly all that Your love has made You do for me. I see that You
suffered during Your life and death, O Man-God, suffered because of that profound,
ineffable love. No, O Lord, it was not in jest that You loved me, but Your love is perfect
and real. In myself, I see the opposite, for my love is lukewarm and untrue, and this
grieves me very much.
“O Master, You did not love me in jest; I, a sinner, on the contrary, have never loved You
except imperfectly. I have never wanted to hear about the sufferings You endured on the
Cross, and thus I have served You carelessly and unfaithfully.
“Your love, O my God, arouses in me an ardent desire to avoid anything that might
offend You, to embrace the grief and contempt that You bore, to keep continually in
mind Your Passion and death, in which our true salvation and our life are found.
“O Lord, Master, and eternal Physician, You freely offer us Your Blood as the cure for our
souls, and although You paid for it with Your Passion and death on the Cross, it costs me
nothing, save only the willingness to receive it. When I ask for it, You give it to me
immediately and heal all my infirmities. My God, since You agreed to free me and to heal
me on the one condition that I show You, with tears of sorrow, my faults and
weaknesses; since, O Lord, my soul is sick, I bring to You all my sins and misfortunes.
There is no sin, no weakness of soul or mind for which You do not have an adequate
remedy, purchased by Your death.
“All my salvation and joy are in You, O Crucified Christ, and in whatever state I happen to
be, I shall never take my eyes away from Your Cross” (St. Angela of Foligno).