Last night, at the beginning of the TRIDUUM of Holy Week, we celebrated the Last Supper of the Lord with his disciples. In an act of service on that evening, Jesus knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples, stating “For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.” Our liturgy today is very different. Today, Jesus faces his death on the cross, which we just heard in our Gospel reading of Jesus' passion. We can only imagine the thoughts and feelings of Jesus’ disciples looking at Golgotha and Jesus on the cross from a distance. Their hopes and dreams were shattered. Their expectation of Jesus as the Messiah has died. The disciples feel despair, numbness, and fear. They have nowhere to go. They had not yet experienced the resurrection because resurrection had never before occurred in human history. What they saw was Jesus dead. They thought this was the end.
Every Friday during Lent, we have prayed the stations of the cross, accompanying Jesus on this journey which today takes us to his death on the cross on Good Friday. Stations of the cross are traditionally prayed on Good Friday to commemorate the day on which Jesus died. But why call today Good Friday, this day of beatings, betrayal, mockery and death. How can this be good? One answer is that we know that Christ’s death on Good Friday is not the end. We as disciples of Christ are looking toward Easter. We know that is coming. We also know that we living in a world with a lot of suffering. We have war raging in Europe right now. We may have loved ones & family members suffering from illness and disease. We ourselves or our loved ones and friends may struggle with addictions, a struggle that never ends. We may have relationships that have ended recently. We may struggle at work. Jesus in his suffering on his way to the cross understands the suffering we go through. The God to whom we pray, the God who created the universe and came to earth to save us, he understands what we are going through. If he endured the pain of his passion and of the cross, he can understand our pain.
In a few moments in our Good Friday liturgy we will have adoration of the cross, a practice that started in Jerusalem by Christians in the Early Church. Veneration of this representation of Christ's cross does not mean that we actually adore the material image. Rather, we adore and venerate what it represents. In kneeling before the cross or by touching it in a gesture of love and reverence, we are paying the highest honor to our Lord's cross as the instrument of our salvation. Because the Cross is inseparable from Christ’s sacrifice, in reverencing his Cross we, in effect, adore Christ. Thus we affirm: We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
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