Good Friday 2025
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
April 18, 2025
Before I begin my homily, I would like to greet fellow members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre who are with us today. Thank you for your support of the Church in the Holy Land, especially in these times when there is much suffering and turmoil. Let us pray for peace in the land made holy by One whose death we honor today.
Let us now remind ourselves what it is we are doing on this Good Friday. We are making a journey “from desolate bitterness to sweet hope.” (Erik Varden)
As the liturgy opened, you knelt, and I prostrated myself on the floor. No other posture will do on this day, when, with the whole Church, we contemplate the death of Christ. Only in desolation can we begin to grasp our need to be forgiven; only in hope can we begin to perceive the depth of his love.
So it is that the Church bids us all to rise and pray as men and women of hope. In the prayer that the Church placed on our lips, we acknowledged that the Passion of Christ abolished the ancient sin that disfigured the image of God within us. We asked only that this distorted image be transfigured by the One who assumed our humanity to redeem it. As the Church’s ancient prayer was offered, our hearts filled with hope. The Lord laid down his life, not just to make us better persons, but to transform our human nature, to make us sharers in his divine glory.
We then listened intently to the Word of God. Isaiah’s ancient words resonate now because they point to Jesus by whose suffering and death we are saved: “He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.” This is an exchange we can understand only in light of God’s immense love: His wounds, the wounds of Christ, are exchanged for our healing.
The Letter to the Hebrews unveils the priestly character of Christ’s sacrifice. Out of love for us, Christ made himself an oblation, an offering to the Father so that our sins would be forgiven, so that we might have eternal life. What is a priest except one who offers himself so that others might live? Let us humbly acclaim Christ crucified, as our Great High Priest.
His priestly sacrifice shines forth in St. John’s account of the Passion. We are led through the agonies that Christ endured for our salvation. We meet along the way the same people we meet in other Passion narratives. Yet it is only John, the one who stood at the foot of the Cross, who tells us, that when the soldier pierced Jesus’ side with a lance, blood and water flowed out: the water of Baptism by which we are regenerated, the Eucharistic Blood of Christ by which we are transfigured. Even as we mourn our sinful complicity in the death of Christ, do we not find hope and joy in river of life and love flowing from Christ’s side?
For which reason, we will stand to offer prayers for the Church and the world. As the immensity and tenderness of Christ’s crucified love dawns on us afresh, the horizon of our imperfect love expands well beyond ourselves, encompassing believers and non-believers and those in every condition of life. No one is excluded from the reach of this greatest of all loves.
As if to unveil that greatest of all loves, the liturgy now directs our gaze towards the Cross. The Cross is held high in procession through this Cathedral. Three times the deacon chants, “Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the Savior of the world!” Three times we reply, “Come, let us adore!” So identified is the Savior with the Cross that bore his suffering body that we revere the Cross itself, indeed the “Faithful Cross”, for in bearing Christ’s body, the tree of death became the tree of life. As the Cross is brought forth, our inner eyes are opened so that we might behold the One who loves us like no other. As we come forward to adore the Cross of Christ, let St. Paul’s words echo in our each of our hearts: “May I never boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14).
Our Good Friday service culminates as we pray the Our Father and prepare ourselves to receive Holy Communion worthily. It is the only day in the year when Holy Mass is not celebrated; yet, we do not abstain from receiving the Body of Christ, for thus do we have communion with the One who laid down his life for us. Afterward, we will depart in silence, as if to contemplate as long as possible, what it is we have seen and heard in this Good Friday liturgy. So may our hearts be filled with hope as we await the Resurrection. So may our journey “from desolate bitterness to sweet hope” be completed.