Good Friday
A non-religious friend of mine asked me, “What’s so good about Good Friday? What’s so good about Jesus being tortured and dying?” It got me thinking about how lazy we have become in our language. In Shakespeare’s time the average person used about 30,000 different words; we use about 5,000. We substitute one word to mean so many things that the word loses its real meaning. We use the word “good” when we mean “tasty” (a good meal), “entertaining” (a good movie), “pleasant” (good weather), “loyal” (a good friend), and let’s not forget “nice” (good manners). “It is good” spoken by God at Creation, gives us insight into what goodness really means. At this moment there is perfect order in the universe. All of nature is in harmony with God. The “good” accomplished on Good Friday is that Jesus has completed the work to restore the universe to perfect order. We have the opportunity to be restored to the state of grace that had been lost and can choose to live in harmony with God. What is good about Good Friday? The price for our sin had finally been paid – one time for all eternity. Every time God entered into a covenant with humankind, we broke the covenant. He finally made a covenant with the one person who could and would keep it – His Son – and God became Man for us to make and keep the covenant as a Man for all humanity. It is His fulfilling of the covenant perfectly that is “good.” The word “good” is a reflection of God Himself in His glory, in His mercy, and in His love. It is this love which we seek to understand better and why Good Friday calls every Catholic home – even those who have been away for a while. To contemplate His suffering is to enter into the mystery of His profound love for us. We cannot grow in our love for Him without entering into mystery of His suffering. It is this willingness to “compassionate” Jesus, to enter into His suffering with Him, placing ourselves at the foot of the cross next to Blessed Mother, that brings so many graces into our lives, enabling us to break the chains of habitual sin and free our souls to love Him more deeply and become the best version of ourselves. I have written 15 meditations of The Passion below. They can be used for a 15 decade Rosary, a 15 decade Chaplet of Divine Mercy, or Stations of the Cross. The tone in these meditations is unlike my regular posts. They are very graphic, so sensitive people may find them disturbing. If you don’t want to read them, stop reading here. 1st Decade: Pilate knew Jesus was innocent, but he was more interested in keeping power. He knew that once he gave Jesus over to be scourged, the soldiers would be merciless to Jesus. He had seen it before many times. Many people never made it…
