Meditation for Good Friday

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Yes we were.  And we still are.  Because he is crucified everyday.

Our Lord is being crucified all around us at every moment and most of us are too blind or too busy to see.

There is little point in walking, singing, weeping, praying before the suffering face of Jesus today if we do not see his anguished features in the sad stories on the ‘News at Ten’ tonight.  Remembering him in the past without recognising him in the present is to miss the whole point of the Good Friday ceremonies.  We must connect the two.  It is the broken body of Christ in the world today that we are called to identify during these holy hours of this Good Day.  ‘Weep not for me but weep for  . . . ’

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Yes we were.  And we still are.  Because he is crucified everyday.

• We crucify Jesus when we exclude anyone from the table of our hearts, of our homes, of our country. ‘Christ’ is the name of those we are excluding.
• We crucify Jesus when we close our doors to the refugees and asylum seekers that desperately need our help – ‘In the drama of the family of Nazareth, we can perceive the painful conditions of so many migrants, especially refugees, the exiled, the displaced and the persecuted.’ (Pope Benedict)
• We crucify him when we shop, travel, vote, adopt careless, selfish lifestyles without reference to the destruction of his body, the fragile earth.
• We crucify him whenever we restrict and confine his loving presence to a specially privileged place or chosen people; we do this when we are afraid.
• Christ is still sweating blood whenever children are being abused, abducted, starved, abandoned.  He cries again in despair to his Father at every new attack on innocence, whether in the unborn baby, in the damage we do to our bodies, those temples of the Holy Spirit, in the way we exploit, persecute and scapegoat those who are different to us – different because of disability, poverty, gender, creed or culture.

The words of Scripture today call to us to die to ourselves, so as to reconcile, in our own bodies, like Jesus did, the hatred, the evil, the fear that stalks the world as it did on that day, and in that distant place, that we remember this morning.  Today’s ritual is no mere nostalgic walk down the memory-lane of our Lord’s painful suffering and death; it is, rather, the awful reminder that this destruction of God’s own presence amongst us, is still happening on the Calvaries of our society and our world – and all to often, in our own homes.

We must die, with Jesus, on the cross of our ego, of our prejudice, before we can truly experience in our hearts and bodies, that inner freedom, that abundant life of Easter.  Worship without inner transformation is worthless routine.  There is a huge difference between external ritual and interior conversion and surrender.  ‘Rend your hearts, not your garments.’

Christ washed feet so that we would learn how to wash the feet of strangers.  No other reason.

And it all begins within.  The passion of Christ is for setting fire to that other passion that begins to burn in our own hearts – and then, we are changed forever.  We are changed forever because love has overcome the fear in us.  The constant image in our hearts today is of a very human Jesus, his arms nailed open to a piece of wood, whispering, with his last breath, those three most dangerous words, ‘I love you’.

 (From a homily Daniel gave as parish priest, St Benedict’s Garforth)