Today we embrace the truth of Christ’s death that saves us…
Reflections on the readings for Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion (April 2, 2021): IS 52:13 – 53:12; PS 31:2,6,12-13,15-16,17,26; HEB 4:14-16; 5:7-9; JN 18:1 – 19:42
MISSIO offers “Preaching Mission,” as a homily help, providing connections to mission from the readings of Sundays, Feast Days and Holy Days.
The yearly reading of the Passion of our Lord taken from St. John’s Gospel starts with Jesus and His disciples going to the garden where He prayed before Judas’ betrayal and His arrest. From there we hear the sequence of events...
On this day commemorating the Passion of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, we pause to meditate on all He endured for our sake. Christians recognize in the sadness of Good Friday that Jesus’ body, mind, and spirit were tortured. And we know that it was all for us, for our salvation. He was innocent. He was the pure Lamb sacrificed in our place. In the first reading in today’s unique liturgy, we hear Isaiah’s oracle about the Suffering Servant. The prophet foresees the coming of one who takes on himself the guilt of others. “It was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured.… He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins …by his stripes we were healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5). In Jesus we find the fulfillment of these words – and the hope of all humankind.
The yearly reading of the Passion of our Lord taken from St. John’s Gospel starts with Jesus and His disciples going to the garden where He prayed before Judas’ betrayal and His arrest. From there we hear the sequence of events that we have heard so often and know so well. Yet they still manage to touch us with the enormity of events that bring us ever closer to Christ’s incomprehensible sacrifice. We hear Peter deny Him, the travesty of trials before Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate. Scourged and mocked with a crown of thorns, Jesus is sentenced to die on a cross. Forced to carry His own instrument of death to the place of execution, our Lord is stripped, nailed to the wooden beams, and raised up for all to see. Most of the crowd reviles Him, but not all. “Standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple there whom He loved He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (John 19:25-27). Jesus’ gift of His mother Mary to John was also a gift to us. As our mother, too, she can help us stay close to Christ to understand that He died out of love and obedience to His Father and love and mercy for us.
