Glory and Victory

Good Friday

The passion account from the four gospels provide us with four separate and distinct viewpoints of Jesus' suffering, betrayal, trial, and Crucifixion. Although the passion gospel for Palm Sunday follows the three years lectionary cycle, the passion gospel for Good Friday is always taken from St John’s Gospel, year in year out. The liturgy seems to express the Carthusian motto in choosing to stick with this one text as an immovable axis despite the revolving lectionary cycles: “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis” - “the Cross is steady while the world turns.”

Why would John’s version be chosen as the Passion for Good Friday? What do we encounter in John’s account of our Lord’s death? All the great themes of St John’s Gospel are featured here: love as sacrifice, glory as life laid down, the majesty of the suffering Christ whose crucifixion is exaltation and whose cross is a royal throne. The key to understanding John’s Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ is found in this theme: “glory”! “Glory” is St John’s most distinctive word. “We have seen His glory, full of grace and truth” John says at the beginning, in the epic prologue of his gospel; a word picked up frequently as the gospel unfolds. The paradox of this theme is that the glory of Jesus is ultimately revealed in His suffering and death on the cross. It is at the precise moment of His passion that Christ appears most kingly, most glorious! His kingship is acclaimed even in His passion. In fact, it is most apparent.

Unlike the other gospels where Simon the Cyrene helps our Lord carry His cross, here our Lord carries the cross Himself. He has no need of our help or any help. He’s quite capable of carrying the entire burden of the world and its weight of sin. Unlike Luke’s gospel where the women of Jerusalem weep out of pity for Him, here our Lady and three other women (including the Beloved Disciple) stand beneath the shadow of the cross, almost composed and in awe as they have profound confidence in our Lord’s authority even at the hour of His death. Our Lord has no need of our pity or sympathy. Unlike Matthew and Mark’s account, there is no loud exclamation of abandonment (“My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!”). Instead, our Lord continues to issue commands from the cross as a King would and should: “Woman, this is your son” … “this is your mother.” Till the very end, our Lord is in charge.

Therefore, the Passion of St John, chronologically speaking, is not first a defeat then a victory (as might be said regarding the other gospels or in the Liturgy) but the Passion, in itself, is a victory right from the very start. At one and the same time, the Passion seems an apparent defeat and the greatest victory. This is why in the Byzantine Rite (be it Catholic or Orthodox) the “Alleluia” – a song of praise and joy – is sung when the Lord dies, because what occurred on the Cross and His holy death are seen already as a victory over evil – something not experienced in the same way in our Roman Liturgy. Our Eastern brethren can’t wait for Easter to do this!

In St Luke’s Gospel, our Lord dies as the obedient servant with a goodnight prayer on His lips: ‘into thy hands I commend my spirit’. But in John, the last word from the cross is a single word in Greek: tetelestai, or in our translation: “It is accomplished!” That word is the clue to the entire Passion and indeed to the Fourth Gospel. What does this mean?

This last word of our Lord is not the last utterance of a dying man, fading away into nothing, as if it stands for resigned acceptance of an inevitable, tragic destiny with the overtones of defeat: ‘it’s all over’? No! This is no cry of defeat but a stirring victory song. The meaning of this word is captured by the line in Bach’s musical rendition of St John’s Passion: “the hero of Judah wins with triumph and ends the fight.” His message is that while death is indeed ‘the last enemy’, this death marks the beginning of the great reversal through which life is given back to the world: not defeat but victory. If this is how the passion story ends, then Golgotha must be understood not only as a place of pain but of transfiguration.

John’s invitation is to contemplate with him what Jesus realises on the Cross. Since Adam’s Fall, we have been separated from God. The Tree of Life was no longer available to us, and all must now suffer death. The Incarnation is only one step in the journey that God makes to draw Himself closer to us. The first step. But it is on the cross that our Lord completed that work of reconciliation. It is in this context that we can understand His final words: “it is accomplished.” It is at the moment of His holy death that our Lord completes His grand work of restoring what was lost to us, but now in a more resplendent and glorious form. He gives His own divine life to us on the cross. The Cross, the tree of death, is paradoxically, the Tree of Life, our guarantee of entrance into Paradise! This is why this Friday is known as Good Friday. In fact, calling it Good Friday is an understatement. In other non-English speaking countries, today is actually called the Great Friday.

Although our world is often plunged into darkness with every crisis that we encounter, a loved one whom we have lost, a friendship or relationship that is severed, a plan that experiences setback, an endeavour which ends in failure, or a physical pain or terminal ailment that is unbearable, we can still find strength, hope and joy in knowing that our lives continue to be illuminated by the brilliant transforming power of the Cross. If we entrust to the crucified Lord our sufferings, He transforms them. The Cross, in sum, is a true transformer, that takes all our darkness, bitterness, sin, death and gives us back light, sweetness, grace and Life.

We have this beautiful assurance and reminder from Pope Benedict XVI: “A world without the Cross would be a world without hope, a world in which torture and brutality would go unchecked, the weak would be exploited and greed would have the final word. Man’s inhumanity to man would be manifested in ever more horrific ways, and there would be no end to the vicious cycle of violence. Only the Cross puts an end to it. While no earthly power can save us from the consequences of our sins, and no earthly power can defeat injustice at its source, nevertheless the saving intervention of our loving God has transformed the reality of sin and death into its opposite.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Nicosia, Cyprus, 5 June 2010)

Have a Good Friday! Nay, have a Great Friday!!!!