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SO THEY took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote a title and put it on the cross; it read, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." [Jn 19:17-19]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903-1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

EVENING SACRIFICE ^_[1]

TORN FROM OUR MIDST

1. The fifth sorrowful mystery of the rosary voices a cry of grief: Jesus dies on the cross. The simple and elegant Apostles' Creed laments that Jesus "...suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into the dead.^[2]

2. Good Friday stands alone among all other worship services in the Church. Its austerity and bleakness personify the desolate hearts of Jesus' followers. Our saviour is torn from our midst, accursed by being hung on a tree [cf. Deu 21:22-23] and devoured by the jaws of the grave.

TO LOSE ALL

3. In this second of the holy Triduum of worship services, we contemplate the mystery of a world that crucifies the very Messiah for whom it hungers, a world that disavows the unity of God's Kingdom even as it deplores selfish division. We meditate on the sorrow of the disciples devastated by the execution of their master and teacher.

4. To lose Christ was to lose all. We accompany Jesus' faithful followers who seek but cannot find their Lord. Therefore, we do not process in this liturgy of solemn remembrance. Our music is restrained; our celebration of Holy Eucharist is suspended as we await the new birth of our Lord and our own salvation.

HEAR THE PROCLAMATION

5. The Church is comforted and nourished, however, as we continue to partake of the Blessed Sacrament consecrated in the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the first celebration of the Church's Triduum. The Bride of Christ, suffering as a woman labors in childbirth, awaits the resurrection of its Messiah, the bridegroom abducted at the very flowering of his beauty. [cf. Mk 2:20]

6. In the Vigil of Easter, the most solemn holy day of the liturgical year--as well the consummation of the Triduum celebration--we rejoice to hear the proclamation of Our Lord's rising from the dead. Since "all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" [Jn 1:3], the simplicity of our worship service echoes our total dependence upon our saviour for our necessities, our life, our salvation.

FAR FROM COMPLETE

7. To gain Christ is to inherit everything: comfort, mercy, the blessings of righteousness, peace, all heaven and earth, and ultimately a sharing in God's own glory. At the celebration of his last Passover Feast, Jesus brings his earthly ministry to an end, and though the apostles were well convinced his mission died on the cross with him, it remained far from complete.

8. Analogous to God's drawing light out of darkness at the beginning of the world [Gen 1:4,18] is Jesus' mission to draw his followers apart from the world:

I DO not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth." [Jn 17:15-17]

DIVINE DIGNITY

9. God wills, once and for all time, that the darkness of sin, against which Our Lord struggled throughout his earthly ministry, be separated and banished decisively from the eternal light of resurrection. In his loving providence, God wills the supreme sacrifice of himself, through his only son Jesus Christ, so that not one of his human creatures be lost.

10. Jesus, in his celebration of the Passover supper, unites his body and blood with the simple gifts of bread and wine, and confers upon the table of fellowship a divine dignity, a sign of the convergence of human frailty in the shadow of the cross and the power of divine love. Our Lord desires that the table of fellowship be lifted up in the sight of all men as the altar of the most holy sacrifice of his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

UNRECOGNIZABLE

11. When Jesus was taken down from the cross, he no longer appeared young. Certainly the scourging, the crown of thorns, the midnight trials, the march to Golgotha, and the tortures of the cross itself disfigured him horribly. In this respect, he seemed to resemble the two thieves on either side of him, a bruised reed, a dimly burning wick. [cf. Isa 42:3] Yet, the sufferings of Jesus were wholly unique and extraordinary. Why?

12. Our saviour's holy face, ravaged by scourging, piercing, and exhaustion, so very far from retaining its youthful ardor, still yet gnarled to a shocking degree under the staggering weight of human misery, suffered so much in the span of a few short hours as to be unrecognizable: "His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance." [Isa 52:14]

OFFERED AS RANSOM

13. Eclipsing the tortures of crucifixion--if such a thought could dare be contemplated--was the train of mankind's sin harnessed to Jesus' shoulders: man's diseases and infirmities, his sorrows and despair, his every tear and disappointment. Unlike the two thieves who died, each having gone the way of his own crimes [cf. Isa 53:6], Christ took on the sins of humanity and offered himself in ransom to save God's chosen people from oblivion.

14. In humble obedience to his Father, Christ has became the cornerstone [cf. 1Pet 2:6] on which he has established "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people". [1Pet 2:9] Our Lord has reconciled spirit and flesh and conferred an absolution on those who love him:

I WILL remember their sins and their misdeeds no more. [Heb 10:17]

SURELY HE has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, prophesied Isaiah, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. [Isa 53:4-5]

CONSPICUOUS STONE

15. Having accomplished his earthly ministry and the fullness of his martyrdom, and intending to shatter the power of sin, the Lamb of God [cf. Jn 1:29] entered into his great Sabbath rest.^[3] To the stunned survivors who grieved nearby, the conspicuous stone covering the Lord's tomb solemnized the overpowering reality of his death.

16. Above the deep recesses of the tomb, Jesus' stricken followers wept, oblivious that his grave was the flash point for the titanic confrontation between the light of life [cf. Jn 8:12] and the darkness of death.^[4] Who among us, possessing the light of life, could doubt the outcome? "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it"! [Jn 1:5]

STAIR TO HEAVEN

17. The power of God has vanquished the power of death, to set all creation free from its "bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God". [Rom 8:21] Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son who rose from the dead, hews mankind's stair to heaven from the wood of the cursed tree.^[5] O Death, I will be your death. Sheol, I will be your destruction.^[6]

18. The reality of Christ's passion, death and resurrection makes no less of an impact on our world than it did for Mary and the disciples at the foot of the cross:

WE WERE buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. [Rom 6:4-5]

REPENTANCE AND GRACE

19. Like the table and altar, the tree and ladder, darkness and the light, life and death, the Lord wills for each of us a new existence. He calls each of us to a new, exalted life in the mystical Body of Christ. He bestows upon us a supernatural hope: "From the womb of the morning, like dew, your youth will come to you." [Ps 110:3] And you will be comforted by his right hand on your shoulder, assured in your heart of his steadfast love: "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold I am alive for evermore." [Rev 1:17-18]

20. Our celebration of the Lord's passover from life to death and to life again proclaims that we Christians are rescued from the futility of corruptible human history. As exemplified by this solemn Celebration of the Lord's Passion, the Church stands on the rock of God's time, in which the past, present and future coalesce into the one eternal glory of God. To die to oneself is to gain Christ. May each of us seek Christ by repentance and find him through grace. May the Church, wounded though never slain, assailed but never vanquished, eternal yet forever young, lift up its hands as an evening sacrifice of praise on this day of Our Lord's sorrow! [cf. Psa 141:2]

^[1] Good Friday /The Passion of the Lord /Triduum of Easter /Cycles A, B, C /Isa 52:13-53:12 /Heb 4:14-16, 5:7-9 /Jn 18:1-19:42.

^[2] SACRAMENTARY, "Profession of Faith", Apostles' Creed (1985).

^[3] Cf CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, 2nd ed., no. 624 (1997); cf. Heb 4:7-9.

^[4] Cf Gregory of Nyssa, "The Great Catechism", Chapt. 16, NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS, eds. Philip Schaff, et al., vol. 5, (1892; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1994) 489. "For when, in that concrete humanity which He had taken to Himself, the soul after the dissolution returned to the body, then this uniting of the several portions passes, as by a new principle, in equal force upon the whole human race. This, then, is the mystery of God's plan with regard to His death and His resurrection from the dead; namely, instead of preventing the dissolution of His body by death and the necessary results of nature, to bring both back to each other in the resurrection; so that He might become in Himself the meeting-ground both of life and death, having re-established in Himself that nature which death had divided, and being Himself the originating principle of the uniting those separated portions."

^[5] Cf CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, no. 618.

^[6] DAILY PRAYER FROM THE DIVINE OFFICE, "Holy Saturday", Ant 1 of Evening Prayer I (1974: London: Wm Collins Sons & Co.; Sydney: E. J. Dwyer Pty.; Dublin: Talbot Press Ltd.) 324; cf Hos 13:14.

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