THE PASSION BEYOND OUR UNDERSTANDING

GOOD FRIDAY     

Isa 52:13-53:12; Ps 31:2,6,12-13,15-17,25; Heb 4:14-16,5:7-9; Jn 18:1-19,42

The Passion of the Son of Man

We celebrate the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ on this holy day. We call the day Good Friday because of the inestimable benefits that came to us as a result of the events of this fateful day. On this day, the sacrifice of the Son of Man to God the Father was brought to completion or consummated. Previously, we noted the fact of the beatific vision of the Son of Man due to the hypostatic union of human nature with the Eternal Word of God in him. The union made the soul of the Son of Man blessed from the moment of conception. If he enjoyed divine happiness from his conception, what then is the nature of his passion? In exploring the nature of the Passion of Jesus Christ, we must first acknowledge the mystery involved, because the two natures, the divine and the human natures, remain depths we can never fully plumb in our limited existence and knowledge; the answer to the question remains a mystery. Nevertheless, we will attempt to delineate certain facts that would enrich our understanding and appreciation of the Passion of our Lord.

Starting from the fact of the beatific vision or the blessedness of the soul of the Son of Man, we recall that our nature is created to be a dwelling place of God. We are to contain God as in a house. Thus, God informed David that his Son would be the one to build a house for God. In the same vein, God revealed his intention to build a house/kingdom for David. These two are the two sides of the same coin; by raising a virtuous Son of Man, God built a lasting house for David, and by submitting/sacrificing his will to do God’s will, the Son of Man built a befitting house for God. This second part of submitting his human will to God is properly the activity of the Son of Man building the great and befitting house for God. In our understanding of the corresponding activities, God is the one who built the house, for human nature belongs to God. The Son of Man is said to build the house of God in the sense that He rebuilt what was destroyed and rededicated it to God. As we heard him say to the Jews: “Destroy this Temple and I will raise up in three days.” But because the two activities belong to the same Person of the Son of God, we can attribute both to the Son of Man. Our attention on the passion of the Lord brings us to focus on what distinctly belongs to the human soul and will of the Son of Man. We have to consider this, for in there lies his ability to merit a reward or glory from the Father for us. For in his Godhead, the Son already has everything that belongs to the Father.

The Son of Man is able to merit grace or glory to the extent he remains committed or dedicated to the Word, and therefore to the Father, without the divine aid or illumination of his beatific vision. Hence, it was necessary, and as it truly happened, that the original blessedness began to withdraw from him. This is the cause of the flood of sorrow that gradually overwhelmed his soul as his death approached. Indeed, this requirement is justified if he is to be like his brothers and sisters in all things except sin. With the gradual withdrawal of the divine blessedness or light, the darkness of evil and desolations of human nature without the light of God grew in his soul. As Isaiah prophesied, if the Servant is to prosper, he must be divested of his inborn blessedness or privileges first. “See, my servant will prosper, he shall be lifted up, exalted, rise to great heights. 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, and kings stand speechless before him; for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before.” The departure of his initial glory or the face of God from him is the major cause of his passion, for this is the major suffering of the damned. Added to this is the burden of our sins. The Son of Man felt in his soul the burden of our sins as if he had committed each one of them. The pain of this cannot be imagined in the background of his total love for God. “And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. But we, we thought of him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low. Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins.”

Added to the great pain and sorrow of carrying the guilt of our sins and their divine punishment, we consider him a sinner and distance ourselves from him. The pain of this rejection by his own kins, and the fact that he was killed by them, is enough to crush him to death. “We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and the Lord burdened him with the sins of all of us. Harshly dealt with, he bore it humbly, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers never opening its mouth.” The crowning of his passion is in his feeling abandoned by God, whom he loved, as it were, infinitely. His cry on the Cross demonstrated this. He felt the sentence of damnation from God. “The Lord has been pleased to crush him with suffering.” The greatest pain any human soul can suffer is that of a feeling of damnation. It is not just the absence of God’s presence and light, but the loss of hope of ever having it. The Saviour suffered this on the Cross. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” But he did not despair. He hoped in God’s salvation.

The psalmist sings of his steadfastness in his suffering. “In you, O Lord, I take refuge. Let me never be put to shame. In your justice, set me free. Into your hands I commend my spirit. It is you who will redeem me, Lord.” Remaining steadfast in his faith, hope, and love of God through these waves of unthinkable sufferings and sorrows, the Son of Man rededicated our human nature to God. This sacrifice is what makes him our High Priest. “Since in Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme high priest who has gone through the highest heaven, we must never let go of the faith that we have professed. For it is not as if we had a high priest who was incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us; but we have one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin.” Because he redeemed our human nature in himself and through his passion, he can claim everyone in the same nature who believes. “By his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself.” None of our suffering can equal his suffering because of the purity of our nature in him, his love for God, and his love for us, his brothers and sisters. The letter to Hebrews, therefore, exhorts us to confidence. “Let us be confident, then, in approaching the throne of grace, that we shall have mercy from him and find grace when we are in need of help.” Jesus Christ is no stranger to any of our sufferings or pains.

Saint John, the beloved Apostle, delicately narrates the events of the passion and death of our Lord in the Gospel narrative today. He wants us to understand that the Son of Man freely chose to die for our sins, to redeem us from eternal death and evil. The Church encourages the dramatization of all the scenes or some of them to help people get a vivid representation of what our Lord went through for our sake. The Stations of the Cross and the Passion narrative take the central place in today’s celebration because they replace the sacramental celebration of the Eucharist. In place of the sacramental celebration, the reality of the Passion of our Lord is relived today by all the faithful. After the Passion narrative and the veneration of the Cross, we receive his real presence in the Eucharist celebrated yesterday, which completes our celebration. May our meditations and contemplations of these saving truths strengthen our minds and hearts to commit ourselves totally to following Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

Let us pray: O God, who by the Passion of Christ your Son, our Lord, abolished the death inherited from ancient sin by every succeeding generation, grant that just as, being conformed to him, we have borne by the law of nature the image of the man of earth, so by the sanctification of grace we may bear the image of the Man of heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.