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The Cross, Our Only Hope

St. Agnes Catholic Church
Good Friday
Cycle C
Apr 15, 2022

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041522.cfm

What is the greatest crime a person can commit?  What is the evilest action that a human being can do? 

When I was in middle school, an English teacher taught my class a list of vocabulary words ending in the root, -cide. which means “to kill” or “to cut down.”  These words are a catalogue of awful things, many of them have a good case to be the answer to the question I posed about humanity’s word deed.  Listen to this litany of terror:

Homicide – the killing of another human being
Patricide – the killing of a parent
Aborticide – the killing of an unborn child
Infanticide – the killing of a child
Suicide – killing oneself
Regicide – killing a king

Most of our worst actions involve violence, especially taking the life of a human being.  To this catalogue of cruelty, we added two words in the bloody 20th century.     

Genocide – the killing of an entire people
Ecocide – the killing of life or destruction of the planet. [See also Omnicide]

Both are chilling and it is depressing to consider that we first conceived and committed them in living memory.  But there is a worse crime, a more monstrous action that is unquestionably the most heinous possibility.  It is the sin that we remember on this day. 

            Deicide – meaning the killing of a deity.  The murder of God. 

On this day, Good Friday, we remember how human beings murdered the creator the universe, the author of goodness, and the sustainer of all that is.  Frederick Nietzsche wrote a famous parable in which a mad man predicted the death of God.  He wrote: The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers.”

 We fulfilled Frederick’s Nietzsche’s direst prediction:  the death of God. A few minutes ago during the Passion narrative, we paused and kneeled at this most solemn moment.  We remembered what we did, at 3pm, almost two thousand years ago. 

And yet, we call today “Good Friday.” Good! What’s so good about it?  You know one of the first times my young son EJ came to mass at St. Agnes he was seated in front of this crucifix.  It disturbed him so much that Kate ahd to take him out of the sanctuary.  As adults, we sometimes forget the pure awfulness and horror of Good Friday.

But again, we call today “good,” and I’ll tell you why.  Good Friday reminds us that the most monstrous crime—deicide—is not more powerful than the love of God and the grace of God. Humanity’s worst actions cannot ever outweigh the greatest actions of God. 

God’s love is so overpowering that is surpasses even sin and death.  Today we celebrate God freeing us from our slavery on the cross.  Through Christ’s passion, death has been crucified and evil has been defeated and redeemed, and brought into the light.  Christ transformed the cross into the Tree of Life.     

This whole church proclaims that victory loudly.  You see it in our striking, large stations of the cross that surround you.  In the scenes from the life of St. Paul of the Cross behind the high altar.  In the crosses on almost every object.  And especially in this crucifix.    You may be aware that the Passionists are particularly devoted to the Passion and death of Jesus.  They wear over their heart a sign of Jesus’ Passion, written in three languages and they take a special vow to “keep the Passion of Christ always in our heart” and instill that same awareness in the hearts of others. 

A few years ago, I saw someone wearing a t-shirt from a school named after the Cross of Jesus … it may or may not have been a local high school.  On it was emblazoned the motto, Fear the Cross. 

Good Friday tells us exactly the opposite message. The cross is the source of our only hope.  Good Friday is the greatest fulfillment of the Good News.  So, let us keep the passion of Christ in our hearts as we behold the wood of the cross, on which is hung is our salvation.  O, come let us adore.

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