On this Good Friday 2024, our hope is that it has become abundantly clear to you that are reading this reflection, that all of us have been loved eternally and unconditionally with a divine passion and will continue to be so by God, your Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier… your Father, my Father… Father of the world to come. An indelible reminder of this is the crucifix. Every time we gaze upon Christ crucified, we recall this perennial truth, that we have been and forever will be loved.
Yet, there’s so much beauty and grace happening here today, as we recall the sufferings and pains of our Lord. Beauty and grace in how all of it was premediated as an atonement for our sins. The events of this day and beyond were in the eternal mind and heart of our pure, holy and loving God! When we sin, we premeditate doing evil. It’s one of the three conditions for sin to be mortal—premeditation. When God desires to show his love for us and save us he premeditated a masterpiece of purity and holiness and accomplished it for our redemption. The premeditation of God towards the good is beautiful to behold in comparison to the premeditation of evil. It ought to inspire us to think of what good we wish to accomplish in our brief lives here as pilgrims. Jesus was ready to depart at the tender age of 33 to return to the Father. What about us? Have we done enough to think, “yes Father, now I commend my soul to Thee, for I have done what you have set me out to do.” Our answer should be a resounding ‘No!’ Even Saint Francis of Assisi, considered one of the greatest in Catholic history, said to his brothers before breathing his last breath: “Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up until now we have done little or nothing.” Let us therefore plan good things in our lives and not bad. Let us strive to premeditate with the Saviour only what coincides with the Father’s will. For us, this is a lifelong process so we need to be patient with ourselves, but not inactive. We must be pro-active in “working out our salvation in fear and trembling” as Saint Paul urges us to do in his Letter to the Philippians (2:12).
Everything that was a lead up to the crucifixion—all those pains, rejections, disappointments, sadnesses, sorrows, grief… we can imagine that our Lord suffered everything through his human nature, but with his divine Person. We must always remember that when speaking of Christ, he has two natures (human and divine), but only One Person (the divine, eternal second Person of the Holy Trinity). When he assumed flesh, he did not assume another “person”. Rather, it was the eternal Person, from his eternal pre-existence, that now through flesh and blood, steps into our world, time and space. So, when we look at Jesus carrying the cross, we can say, “God carried his cross” without any theological error whatsoever. When we look at Jesus being crowned with thorns, we can say, “God was crowned with thorns.” Any suffering that Jesus felt, was precisely through his human nature, but in his one eternal Person. Everything he endured within his Passion; all the little contributions of torturous treatment and ill-will towards him.. all of it was like the Royal garb he was dawning to take his place on the throne of the Cross. We have to remember that for Saint John, the cross is not Jesus' demise, but rather his glorification. What would a tidbit of this excruciating pain look like? Just one. Let’s have a look through our imagination.
As a hypothesis, take the Roman soldier who weaved together the crown of thorns they would later cruelly press down into Jesus’ sacred head. Jesus knew that man, inside out. He knew that man better than that man knew himself. He knew that man’s family. He knew that man’s mother, grandmother, daughter, son, every tragedy and every joy they went through together, every high and low. He knew how much as God, he (Jesus) blessed that man and his family throughout his life. He knew that man as he knows us, and walked with him his spiritual road of sanctification, and gave him grace upon grace to persevere in life and know that he too is loved by the God he does not yet know. He knew that man before he was conceived, and smiled upon him when his mother held him in her arms. When he created the sun and the moon and the trees, God had him in mind. When he created the eternal bliss of heaven, God had a special place reserved for him. In a word, he loved that soldier with an infinite, unconditional love as the best Father would love his son.
And it was THAT man who, instead of giving Jesus the most beautiful crown of gold in gratitude, was now weaving a crown of piercing thorns for Jesus so horrific, that one study showed that one of its thorns (according to the research on the Shroud of Turin by Doctor Fredrick Zugibe who is a world renowned cardiologist and expert forensic pathologist)(1), having entered the skull of Jesus, would have struck his trigeminal nerve, which would trigger a lightening bolt of pain throughout his entire body. If anyone were to look up trigeminal neuralgia, which is a deterioration of this nerve (mostly in elderly women) which runs from our skulls down our backs and through our bodies this is the definition they would find something akin to how the American Association of Neurological Surgeons describe the condition: “Trigeminal neuralgia (TN), also known as tic douloureux, is sometimes described as the most excruciating pain known to humanity.” (2) Our Lord would have suffered not only the pain of the thorns, therefore, but the pain of knowing that one of his children whom he loved, the Roman soldier, was the one who fashioned it for him. You see, Jesus’ passion goes way beyond the mere externals, as horrific as they may be. The gospel accounts only begin to scratch the surface.
This is just one example of every single individual who took part in Jesus’ excruciating Passion and Death, starting from Holy Thursday evening, until 3pm on Good Friday. Yet, Jesus endured all of this for and because of all of our sins as well. This is why we need to all repent, from the deepest parts of our hearts, before we stand before our Lord. For we still have no idea how much of our sins were responsible for the pains caused our Lord. Let’s ask him to forgive any part our sins would have had in his nightmare of a Passion.
Paul tells us that Jesus “emptied himself” (Phil 2:6-7). He emptied himself of everything he enjoyed in Heaven so as to become a slave at the hands of the Father’s will.
We must seek to do the same in carrying our own cross each day, as Jesus has asked of us. It’s not easy, it’s not nice, fun or relaxing. It’s a cross. It will hurt. Christ is with us to help, as Simon was with him that day to lighten his load. We too are asked by Jesus to help lighten the load of others. All of us are beckoned to the foot of the cross with Mary, our Mother and the other faithful disciples. All of us are called to keep Jesus company in his most crucial hour. The feast will come later, but for now, we watch, we pray, we weep for our sins. Amen.
(1) “Forensic pathology—which requires many years of specialized education, training, and experience—is the medical speciality that deals with the mechanism and cause of suffering and death due to violence such as crucifixion. The forensic pathologist is a medical sleuth, an expert in reconstruction whose court testimony must possess a high degree of medical certainty. Indeed, his testimony may help to free an innocent defendant or release a killer back into the community.” Frederick T. Zugibe, The Cross and the Shroud (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 2005) 3.
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Thank you for this beautiful reflection. Even in its graphic details it just touches the tip of the iceberg of how much Our Lord suffered for our sins. For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.