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Homilies are posted no later than during the week
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Good Friday |
A Russian peasant woman in 1950 was kissing the feet of
Christ. A Communist soldier asked her, "Grandmother, will you kiss the
feet of our great leader, Comrade Stalin?" "Yes," she replied, "if he
gets crucified for me."
Years ago, when I was newly ordained, a mother berated me
after a Good Friday homily on the crucifixion. The mother had two
children. "I don't want my son and daughter" she shouted,
"exposed to blood and gore as I was at their age." She was terribly
angry. My response would not have made my seminary scripture professor
proud had he been listening. In effect, this mother wanted to keep
Jesus and the cross apart.
Would that the mother had confronted William
Robinson of
Plainview, USA on this same point! I ran across his Letter to the
Editor in a Catholic newspaper. Mr Robinson was responding to a
pronunciamento from a onetime Catholic. It was her position that the
Church for its own good must get Jesus off the cross.
Robinson countered that St Paul did precisely that when he
visited Athens. The scene is generously described in Acts 17:16-34.
There the man from Tarsus ignored the cross of the Savior. His sole
emphasis was on the Resurrection.
And the result? Paul struck out that day against the
Athenian intellectuals. "Some of them burst out laughing." (17:32) This
was hardly the reaction the embarrassed apostle to the Gentiles was
used to. He folded his tent and sneaked from the city under the cover
of darkness. He crossed Athens off his "must return" list. Records
reveal he did not change his mind. He never began a church there. Nor,
unhappily for them and for us, did he ever send one of his celebrated
letters to Athens.
After Athens, he headed for Corinth. It was an arduous
trip by
foot. Paul had much time to both dress his wounds and wonder why he had
lost his magic touch. It is not difficult to picture the humiliated
missionary praying to Christ. He would ask Him to help him understand
what went wrong with his strategy on the Hill of the Areopagus. Nor did
the Nazarene fail him.
The Holy Spirit inspired the missionary to burn his Athens
homilies. His approach in Corinth would be entirely fresh. Before he
reached the city, he put his talented pen to parchment. His plan B
would be later explained in his letters to the church he founded in
Corinth. "Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach
Christ crucified...the power of God and wisdom of God...I am resolved
among you to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified."
Paul's preaching in Corinth was successful. The city was
every
bit as immoral as Athens. Yet, he was a sensation. His many converts
would not let him quit their city for eighteen months. When the
wanderlust Paul got away from them, he would carry warm memories of the
Corinthians. Evidence of this affection is found in the two letters to
them that are extant. When the apostle to the Gentiles turned his back
on the crucified Christ, his preaching produced nothing. When he
carried the crucifix with him into the pulpit, he moved thousands to
embrace Jesus.
Mel Gibson on Ash Wednesday of 2004 proved once again
people's fascination with the cross through his film, "The Passion of
the Christ." People, who had forgotten where cinemas were located in
their communities, clutched reserved seat tickets looking for the
theaters. To satisfy the overflow crowds, delighted cinemas began
running the film early morning. One hundred twenty-five million dollars
in tickets were sold in five days. All this for a film spoken in Latin
and Aramaic dialogue.
Children understand the power of the cross. A child told
me, "I asked God how much He loved me. He stretched both arms
fully sideways and said, `This much.' Then He died." Another told me,
"Jesus built a bridge with two boards and three nails."
It would be folly to remove Jesus from the cross. The body
of Christ without bloody wounds is not the full story. But neither must
we leave Him there by Himself. We must get hold of a ladder and embrace
Him. Why? Paul gives the answer to young Timothy in his second letter
(2:11): "If we have died with Him, then we shall live with Him."
What would Paul have accomplished among the
intellectuals had he returned to Athens but this time emphasizing the
cross? Unhappily we shall never know.
Nobel Prize laureate Czeslaw Milosz writes that
political prisoners in their USSR gulags fashioned a cross from twigs
and prayed to it at night in their cells. They had not forgotten Paul's
lesson. Nor should we.
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http://www.st.ignatius.net/pastor.html
Good Friday:
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It was at Cana, at a wedding feast, that Jesus first
used the term. No one was sure exactly what he meant by it. It didn't
appear to have anything to do with the groom's plight. There was no
wine. Could Jesus help? He would, but first he reminded his mother, my
hour has not yet come. My hour....."What is he referring to?" the
disciples asked.
He met a Samaritan woman at a well. She tried to
duck her need for conversion with a neat theological argument. Jesus
told her that a new hour was coming when people would worship the
Father in Spirit and in Truth. The hour would come when the Spirit of
God, the Truth of God, will be the foundation of the lives of all good
people.
Twice they tried to arrest him when he spoke in the
Temple. But they couldn't because his hour had not yet come.
Then right after he called Lazarus from the tomb,
Jesus rode into Jerusalem while people raised palm branches and sang
hosanna. Some gentiles heard about this and came to ask Philip about
Him. Philip found Andrew and together they went to Jesus. If the
Gentiles knew about Jesus’ presence in Jerusalem, those who were
planning to kill him surely knew. "Now the hour has come," proclaims
the Lord, "for the Son of Man to be glorified."
And John wrote: He knew that the hour had come to
depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who
were in the world. He loved them to the end.
His last prayer at the supper where he gave his Body
and Blood was to his Father, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your
Son so that the Son may glorify you."
Then he crossed the Kidron Valley, the Valley where
apocalyptic literature proclaimed that all the nations of the world
would be judged. He crossed the Kidron Valley. The hour would be a time
of judgment for the nations.
Jesus was not surprised at what happened in the
Garden. He knew all that was going to happen to Him. He was in control.
His accusers fell on their faces when they tried to arrest him. Jesus
taught Pilate. From the pulpit of the cross He saw Mary standing there,
not collapsed in hysteria, but standing and accepting the will of the
Father. He gave Mary to John and John to Mary and Mary to us and us to
Mary. During the hour, his mother became our mother. Finally, He handed
his Spirit over to the Father.
This is not the hour of those who live in darkness.
It is the hour when the Light of Christ illuminates the world.
It is the hour of a New world order. It is the hour
of sacrificial love. It is the hour of the new age of Jesus Christ.
And we venerate the Cross on Good Friday. For
through the cross of Christ, we live in the hour of the Lord. |
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http://www.geocities.com/seapadre_1999/
* available in Spanish - see Spanish
homilies
Good Friday
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http://www.agreeley.com/homilies.html
Good Friday
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http://benedictine.stvincent.edu/archabbey/Weeklywords/Weeklywords.html
Good Friday
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http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/lowhome.html Meeting Christ in the Liturgy
Good Friday
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http://www.ctk-thornbury.org.uk/
Good Friday
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Contact Father at cbonar@cfl.rr.com;
information about his book of homilies is available at www.clydebonar.com.
Good Friday |
"He Was Pierced For Our Offenses" (Isaiah 53:5)
Introduction
For the first two hundred years after Christ no follower of Jesus wore
a crucifix dangling from a chain around his or her neck, no church had
a crucifix. Why? Because in those early days of our church, people had
witnessed crucifixions, they wanted no reminders. An awful death,
re-enacted these days in movies filmed with special effects.
Scripture says Pilate had Jesus scourged. Actually, beaten by a whip
made of leather thongs. Each thong had two small balls of lead attached
near the end. Blow after blow cut first the skin, then into the
underlying muscle tissue. The beating stops only when the prisoner is
near death.
Heavy wrought iron nails put Christ on the cross. Excruciating pain
explodes in his brain as the nails are driven through his wrists, then
his feet. Sagging under his own weight, the Victim pushes upward,
gasping to breath. Cramps sweep over his muscles, knotting them in
relentless, throbbing pain. Each effort brings stinging agony as the
nails tear through the nerves. Until finally the chill of death creeps
through his body.
"he surrendered himself to death" (Isaiah 53:12)
A question: Roman soldiers hammered in the nails, but who crucified
Christ? The answer: We did! The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#598)
says, "our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross."
Listing the Deadly Sins helps us understand. Called "deadly" because
these sins kill the commandment to love God and to love our neighbor as
our self. Each deadly sin puts our self and not God foremost in our
lives.
The worst deadly sin is pride. Pride, an exaggerated self-centeredness.
An example. In an advertising clip for her TV show, while talking to a
young woman defendant, Judge Judy says: "I'm smarter on my dumbest day
than you are on your smartest day." An arrogant, boastful putdown. When
caught in the deadly sin of pride, we think no one is quite as good as
we are.
Pride acts like a screen, blocking out God. Our sins of pride strike
hammer blows, driving in the nails to crucify Christ.
Another deadly sin, envy, gives more hits to those nails. Cain became
jealous of Abel, and killed his brother (Genesis 4:2-8).
A woman being interviewed on a televison talk show said, "Let envy be
your shopping guide. If what someone else has turns you green with
envy, go shopping for it." How silly. Envy tries to convince us that
what someone else has, their possessions or their talents, lowers the
value of the gifts we have. That’s nonsense. We do not need to compare
ourselves with others. God gave each of us a unique set of talents. The
concert pianist need not be jealous of the star quarterback, the
football player need not envy the pianist.
Envy is the opposite of love (1 Corinthians 13:4). Cain’s sin, our sins
of envy drive the nails into the cross.
One more deadly sin, anger. How quickly we anger. A wife complains that
when her husband puts away the dishes he puts them in the wrong places
just to spite her. She gets angry.
Anger shows up in backbiting gossip and sarcasm and passive-aggressive
behavior. After her husband had an affair, his wife refused to have sex
with him. For the past forty years. That’s anger.
Paul wrote to the Ephesians (4:26), "Be angry but do not sin." Anger
keeps hammering those nails to crucify Christ.
The list goes on and on. Each of us has our own list, sins we do. We
must never forget, our sins drive the nails, our sins caused Christ to
suffer on the Cross.
"source of eternal salvation" (Hebrews 4:16)
Christ on the Cross, our altar stripped bare, the tabernacle empty.
Yet, we call this Good Friday. And, it is GOOD. Our second reading,
from Hebrews, tells us why. Today is GOOD because Christ "became the
source of eternal salvation."
Today we see the power of God over evil. From the greatest moral evil
of all times, the murder of God’s only Son, came the greatest of all
goods, our redemption (CCC #312). That’s the first reason today is
GOOD: Christ died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3), fulfilling
Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant.
In Biblical usage, we have been justified by the crucifixion of Christ.
Justification was a technical term used in Roman courts. To be
justified meant for innocence to be reinstated, as if the crime had
never been committed. The crucifixion of Christ wiped out our sins,
purges the record, just as if we had never sinned.
By his crucifixion, Christ gained something else for us, free access to
God the Father. The Lamb of God, by his blood "bought people for God of
every race, language, people and nation and made them a line of kings
and priests" (Revelation 5:9-10). In the Sacraments of Baptism and
Confirmation, we are consecrated to be "a holy priesthood." The
priesthood of all believers.
Paul’s letter to the Hebrews calls Jesus "a great high priest." In
Biblical times before the high priest went to offer sacrifice in the
temple on the Day of Atonement, the high priest had to be free of sin.
To absolve him from every sin against God, he offered a bull as a sin
offering.
Christ on the Cross is the high priest, giving himself as the sin
offering. A sin offering to cancel all the sins that kept the faithful
at a distance from God. Christ the high priest "passed through the
heavens" inviting all believers to approach "the throne of grace."
That’s another reason today is GOOD. By his crucifixion, we Christians
became a "holy priesthood," with direct access to God the Father.
Today is indeed Good Friday. GOOD because Christ "became the source of
eternal salvation," GOOD because His crucifixion cancelled our sins,
inviting us to freely approach God.
"let us confidently approach the throne of grace" (Hebrews 5:9)
Today we mark the day he was executed on the Cross, our liturgy
designed to honor the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus Christ. .
John’s Gospel repeats for us the historical events. That Judas led
police to capture Jesus in the garden across from Kidron valley. His
interrogation by the high priests, Annas and Caiaphas. Then we read how
Pilate questioned Jesus, and found "no case against him." But Pilate
did give in to the crowd, Pilate sent Christ to the Cross.
Listening to the Gospel, we know how true the words, "For God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in
him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16).
Good Friday recalls the greatness of God’s love, that He should submit
to death for us.
We have a long series of prayer intentions. Following a tradition
dating from about the year 800, we pray for the Church throughout the
world, for the health and strength of the Pope as he guides God’s holy
people. We pray for those preparing for baptism, and we pray for the
Jewish people who first heard the word of God. We pray for those who do
not believe in God, we pray for those in special need, for the sick,
the hungry, for those deprived of liberty.
On Good Friday, on the day Christ died for all, the Church prays for
all classes of people. For each intention, the deacon says, "Let us
kneel," then chants the prayer.
Another ancient tradition, first done in the Church of Jerusalem in the
seventh or eighth century, we venerate the cross. Starting with a
veiled cross at the back of the church, the priest uncovers the upper
part, holds the cross high, and chants, "This is the wood of the
cross." We respond, "Come, let us worship." Near the middle of the
church, the deacon uncovers the right arm and again chants, "This is
the wood of the cross." And, a third time at the entrance to the
sanctuary, with the entire cross uncovered.
The custom of gradually uncovering the cross recalls that the True
Cross was not found until about the year 326, discovered by St. Helena.
For our veneration of the cross, all present come forward to kiss a
crucifix, bowing with our bodies before the cross as we bow in spirit
before God. We reverence the cross as the instrument of our redemption,
we pray to Him who redeemed us.
Our Good Friday liturgy recalls the wonder of God’s love. We read the
account in John’s Gospel, we pray that God bless all peoples, and we
venerate the cross.
Conclusion
By the sad commemoration of the Lord’s Passion we are reminded that in
the face of our sins, only Christ, only God the Son, is good enough to
save us. What greater cause could we have to celebrate: to redeem us,
Christ did die on the Cross. |
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These
homilies may be copied and adapted for your own use;
however, they may not be commercially published without permission of
the author.
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