Good Friday
Introduction
“Passio Domini nostri…”
In the Good Friday and Palm Sunday liturgies, there
is read a long and rather detailed
narration of the sufferings and death of the Lord. The narration recounts the
physical sufferings of Christ: the scourging
at the pillar, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the thirst
consuming his throat, the
centurion’s sword piercing his heart.
The narration relates also the spiritual and
psychological sufferings agonizing his human spirit and causing him to
sweat blood: his friends’ half-hearted presence to his sufferings; the
downright betrayal of one he had chosen; the humiliation heaped upon him by the
taunts and ribaldry of human beings who
had lost their humanity; his dismay at
the grief of his “Stabat “ mother standing faithfully at his side unto the end.
Bad news:
In the old
Latin days that long narration began with the familiar: “Passio Domini nostri Iesu Christi, “The Passion (the pain, the agony, the
suffering) of our Lord Jesus
Christ.” That long account of the
sufferings of the Lord is, indeed, Gospel. It is, indeed, “good news” about
God, after so many ages of bad news
about God. The bad news was (and still is) that God does
not suffer but does, indeed, make everyone else suffer! This bad-news God sends floods and plagues and wars
to chastise human beings who annoy him, or who violate his inviolable majesty, or who are not
attuned to his pet peeves or
preferences. This bad-news God visits
disasters upon people as pay-off punishment for their sins, and in this age of
the new leprosy, he concocts AIDS to lay low
immoral sinners. A God who does not suffer but makes everyone else suffer is insufferable.
Such a God is bad news.
Good news:
Then along
comes the good news about the "Passio Domini nostri Iesu
Christi," about the “Passion (the
pain, the suffering, the agony) of our Lord Jesus Christ." Then along
comes the good news about the God who makes
no one suffer but who himself (herself) suffers because of the suffering of
his(her) children! This is the God
of the Gospel which regards God as a
father who broods over the sufferings
of his children, and who is in ceaseless effort to pour the oil of compassion into their wounds and heal
them. This is the God of the Gospel
who does not only not send
suffering upon me but who also, when it does come upon me, “wants me
to help him take this cup from me!”
[1] That is to say, God wants to do something
about my suffering, even before I do,
and God invites me to join him/her in the struggle to overcome my suffering.
This, Chardin says “is unquestionably
the first act of our Father in heaven.” The Gospel, which commands us to
love God with whole heart, soul, and mind,
regards it as impossible to conceive God in any other way, and still more impossible to love
him/her. The God who
does not make us suffer but who, in fact, suffers because we suffer, is not only sufferable but is, indeed, marvelously good news.
Conclusion
Better good news!
The marvelously
good news gets even better still! God
not only suffers because of our sufferings, God now suffers
because of God’s very own sufferings!
After the Incarnation, God is no longer wrapped up safely in divine “insufferability,” and we, in our human “sufferability,” can no longer
“fire back” at God. A father whose beloved son was killed in war shouted
angrily at God, "Where were you
and what were you doing when my son lay dying on the field of battle?”
After the Incarnation, God can now “fire back”: “I too am a father and have a son. And I was doing just what you were doing: weeping over `a beloved son
in whom I was well-pleased’ but who now is crucified, dead, and buried.
[1] These are
the words of Teilhard de Chardin from the Divine Milieu,in the chapter on The Divinization of our
Passivities.