Homily - Good Friday - The Celebration of the Lord's Passion


Homily (Sermon)

The Easter Triduum - Good Friday

“It is accomplished" and bowing his head he gave up the spirit.




The Readings for Good Friday - The celebration of the Lord's passion:

Isaiah 52:13 -53:12
Psalm 30
Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9
John 18:1 – 19:42

[These readings can be found at www.universalis.com for the next few week.]

Easter has been simplified and commercialised by the world around us. The rich history, the thousands of years of tradition, the mystery of Easter is lost, drowned out by bunnies, eggs and chocolate.

Mystery is an interesting word; do you know what it means?
It can mean a puzzle, something unknown, it can also be a type of novel like those written by Agatha Christie, but when we use it to describe the paschal mystery then it doesn't mean something we don’t know, it means almost the opposite, it means “a truth that is unknowable except by divine revelation.”

Easter is divine revelation! Easter is God showing Himself to us!

At Easter we join Christ as we celebrate his passion, death and resurrection. God is revealing to us a truth, a powerful truth, the single truth, Himself. Yesterday we met Christ at the last supper, we traveled with Him to the garden of Gethsemane, we waited with Him and prayed with Him and tried to stay awake with Him.

Today we die with Him. Today is quiet day. A day to reflect on death.A day to reflect on our sin. A day to reflect on where we would be if Christ was not in our lives. Today we reflect on the great sacrifice Christ made for us. On the things in our lives that required Him to make that sacrifice for us. Today we die with Christ, we die to sin, we suffer with Him, we look to the crosses in our own lives that we must bear.

Tomorrow we will see, know, and feel the full mystery, the revelation. But for now it is Christ’s death that is important. We call today Good Friday. I am often asked why it is good. It’s good because Christ, God’s Son, High Priest came to offer a permanent sacrifice for our sins. He needed to sacrifice something perfect; something so opposite to sin and the only thing that fitted that description was Himself. Christ took the role of High Priest and the role of sacrifice. He offered Himself for us. He gave up His life for his friends. The sin of Adam destroyed completely by the blood of Christ.

Today is good because we know the end of the story; we know about the resurrection, we know about the difference Christ makes in our daily lives. But the Easter Triduum is about the journey with Christ, today on that journey we see the cross. The tree that Christ was nailed too, the tree that he was lifted up on for all to see, the tree he was slowly and painfully crucified on, the tree on which he died.

Today is about joining Mary and John at the base of the cross and watching our Lord Jesus die, for us.



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