THE SACRIFICE OF THE LAMB OF GOD

 

Good Friday/2024

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP

Theme: The Sacrifice of the Lamb of God

The Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the centre of attraction for us. Good Friday is a special day to celebrate the Cross of Jesus as a symbol of a unique and unrepeatable miracle of grace. The universal Church relives the sacrifice the Lamb of God made of himself for our redemption. The humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Lamb of God, has many prefiguration down the salvation history. He is prefigured in Abel the just, Isaac as a willing victim, the lamb of Passover in Egypt, etc. These are various prefiguration of the Lamb of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, has two natures: the nature of God and the nature of man. In his nature as God, he is the Eternal Word of God, consecrated to the Father with whom he shares the Godhead. He is sacrificed (dedicated) to the Father from all ages; hence, the celebration is not so much about this reality. In his nature as man, he came that he may dedicate the human nature he assumed to his Father. We celebrate that the Son, in his human nature, successfully lived the will of his Father unto death.

The two rudders which guided and steadied him in his salvation endeavour are: First, the infinite love with which he loved his Father and desired to fulfil his divine will. Second, the infinite love with which he loved us and desired our salvation from sin and evil. As himself said, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.” These two are like powerful propellers that helped him to accomplish his salvation task; they are unbreakable chains that bound him on the Cross of his humanity to die for us. Love, therefore, is the principle and end of the Sacrifice of the Saviour. The love he celebrated in symbolic forms at the Last Supper with his disciples, he actualized in his self-offering on the Cross of Calvary. The love of his Father held his hands bound to the Cross; thus, he could not use his divine power to end or repulse his attackers. The love of his brethren bound his feet to the Cross; thus, he could not run away from his enemies or sufferings they inflicted on him. “As the crowds were appalled on seeing him—so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human—so will the crowds be astonished at him; for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before.” Because his suffering and death demonstrate his love for his Father, the Father himself witnessed: “See, my servant will prosper, he shall be lifted up, exalted, rise to great heights.” Also, because he endured his passion and death for love of his people, he will have multitude as his own. “Hence I will grant whole hordes for his tribute, he shall divide the spoil with the mighty, for surrendering himself to death and letting himself be taken for a sinner, while he was bearing the faults of many and praying all the time for sinners.”

The same Cross of Calvary is also the banquet of rich food and choice wines. It is the banquet of love of God and the love and deliverance of our human nature imprisoned in sin. For this reason, we do not celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice today; the reality is put before us to contemplate. Second reading says that the banquet was not just on Calvary alone, but on the mountain of his humanity. For what he was in the human nature he assumed, found its culmination on Calvary. “During his life on earth, he offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the one who had the power to save him out of death, and he submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard.” The passion narrative from the Gospel of John makes it clear for us: He did not use his divine power to destroy his attackers, and he did not use his human abilities to run from those who wanted him dead. He offered himself for the love of his Father, and the love of us sinners. Jesus Christ is our Sacrifice. We come to eat at this banquet only if we are ready to love God and our neighbours in imitation of him. 

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to understand the infinite love which drove your Son to pour out his life for us, that we may desire and embrace the salvation he won for us.