Christ the Cornerstone

Good Friday calls us to repent and place our hope in Christ

We adore your Cross, O Lord, we praise and glorify your holy Resurrection, for behold, because of the wood of a tree joy has come to the whole world. (Good Friday Antiphon)

Today is Good Friday, a day of sadness, mourning and shame that leads paradoxically to the experience of great hope and rejoicing. Today is the day that Jesus Christ was crucified—one of the most horrific forms of capital punishment ever devised.

For our sake, he who was without sin carried the burden of sinful humanity and submitted to the cruelty of the cross as punishment for wrongs that were committed (and are still being committed) not by him but by us.

We are right to remember this day with immense sadness. What could be worse than this sacrilegious rejection of God’s only Son? His coming to Earth was a divine rescue mission intended to redeem us from the powers of sin and death.

We rejected him, but he continued his mission and took up the cross that is the sign of our redemption. He forgave our betrayals and infidelities, and he submitted to his Father’s will so that we might be saved. No wonder the liturgy for Good Friday has us proclaim: We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, for by your holy cross you have redeemed the world!

This is a great mystery. A hideous instrument of mockery, torture and painful execution has become the means by which fallen humanity has been saved from the power of sin and death.

As we read in today’s first reading (Is 52:13-53:12), the prophet Isaiah foretold this mysterious truth in his description of the Suffering Servant:

Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearer he was silent and opened not his mouth. Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away, and who would have thought any more of his destiny? When he was cut off from the land of the living, and smitten for the sin of his people, a grave was assigned him among the wicked and a burial place with evildoers, though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood. But the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.

If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him. (Is 53:7-10)

Isaiah tells us that “the Lord was pleased to crush him in his infirmity” (Is 53:10). How can this be? How can it please God to have anyone, especially his only Son, suffer? How can human cruelty satisfy the will of God?

The Church teaches that Jesus’ suffering and death were redemptive. They led directly to his glorious triumph over sin and death, and they achieved the victory that has set us free. As Isaiah says, “he gives his life as an offering for sin” (Is 53:10), and the result is everlasting life. Jesus says “Yes” to his Father’s will and our salvation is accomplished through him.

St. Paul correctly describes the Lord’s passion and death as an act of obedience, a profound surrender to the will of his Father. “Christ became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every other name” (Phil 2:8-9). This decisive surrender, the giving up of his human life for our sake, “as an offering for sin,” is what affects his resurrection from the dead and his exaltation as the most holy Son of God. The Father lifts him up and makes his name holy “above every other name.”

Our celebration of Good Friday calls us to repentance for our sins, but it also invites us to place all our hope in Jesus who gives his life for us and who loves us so much that he is willing to offer himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. “By his wounds, we are set free” (Is 53:5).

Rightly observed, Good Friday affirms one of the most fundamental truths of our Catholic faith: The only way to get to the joy of heaven is by the Way of the Cross. And the only way to heal our self-inflicted wounds, is to surrender our wills to the healing power of God our Father.

Today’s sadness will give way to joy, but only after we suffer with Jesus and give ourselves to him completely. Let’s turn our minds and hearts over to Jesus, who carried the sins of the world on his shoulders in order to set us free. †