Kilmallock

6 April 2007

( The thoughts that follow are largely based on. SC 7-9 ).

Today we remember the death of Jesus, the horror and suffering of Calvary. But we call this day Good Friday. In the last moment of his life, Jesus uttered the words, “It is accomplished”. It was an expression of triumph, a cry of victory. In that moment of death and agony Jesus shows how the truth of love can transform even death into radiant light, the light of Easter ( BENEDICT XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, [SC] 35 ).

What had been accomplished as Jesus died on the Cross? What was accomplished, what was successfully completed, was a plan that goes back to the dawn of history. God is love and from the beginning God’s love was shown in his care for his people. He told them that his love was completely reliable and that he would never abandon them: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” ( Is 49:15 ). He told them that his love would be faithful and would last forever: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” ( Jer 31:3 ).

God was with his people through exile and disasters, through testing times and through moments of success and rejoicing. But the Jewish people were waiting for something more, for the Messiah who would establish God’s rule on earth. They trusted in God who had made the promise to them: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” ( Jer 29:11 ).

That was what happened in the life of Jesus: “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son not to condemn the world but so that the world might be saved through him” ( Jn 3:16,17 ). In Jesus, God’s Son and our Brother, a human being loves God completely with a love which is God’s own love expressed in a human life. And in that love, lived to the end on the Cross, a new future and a new hope were opened up for the human race.

Every moment of the life of Jesus was an expression of complete and generous love for his Father. “He offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the one who had the power to save him from death, and he submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard”.

On the Cross he gave up his Body, he gave his life, his whole self, out of love for his Father and for us. He bore our sufferings and carried our sorrows. And in that giving of himself, he led the way into the glory that God is offering to the human race. He entered into the glory that he had with his Father before the world was made ( Jn 17:15 ).

In other words, he gave himself without limit to the Father, but he also gave himself without limit to us. That is what the Eucharist expresses so eloquently: we receive the Body of Christ and in doing so we become more fully the Body of Christ – the Body which now sits in glory at the right hand of the Father. Pope Benedict reminds us that St Augustine says that if we receive the Eucharist properly we are what we receive ( SC 36 ).

This was the high point, the fulfilment of all God’s dealings with the human race – the offer to us a share in his own glorious life. This was what the faithful people of God were longing for: “many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it ( Mt 13:17 ). In the Eucharist, Jesus speaks to our thirsting hearts, our “hearts yearning for the source of life, our hearts yearning for truth” ( SC 2 ).

When Jesus cried out, “It is accomplished”, he was not speaking only of his own human life; he was speaking of the whole plan of God which had been worked out through all the centuries. God’s plan had reached it culminating point. The power of sin and death had been broken a new and eternal relationship with God had been established. From that moment, creation is moving towards the day when “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more”. And God will say, "Behold, I am making all things new." ( Rev 21:4,5 ). That is why today is called Good Friday.