Saint Joseph’s Church

16 March 2008

“Jesus, crying out in a loud voice, yielded up his spirit”. In Holy Week, we Christians recall the death of Jesus. Not only that, we proclaim that the cruel and unjust death lies at end of the road that we are all trying to follow: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38).

That road follows a different path in each of our lives, but the end of it is the same: it leads to his cross and resurrection. It will ask each of us to recognise that all the things that are important to us, all the things that we place our hopes in, are, like ourselves, subject to death and decay. “The beauty of the world hath made me sad; this beauty that will pass”.

Pope Benedict pointed out that from day to day we need all sorts of hopes to keep us going: things we work for and long for, our ambitions and our plans. But, he reminded us, they are not enough without the great hope which can only be God, because only God can fulfil the hopes that human efforts could never attain. God gives us a hope and a love which are stronger than death or betrayal or any evil.

That is what we see in Holy Week. Jesus loses everything that makes life bearable – some of his friends betrayed him, denied him and abandoned him: he was deprived of his freedom, he was condemned unjustly, he was treated savagery and mockery and with no with respect for his dignity, and finally he lost his life in the most public, and cruel way possible.

But there was another reality, the reality of his free giving of himself. He gave his body and blood to his apostles at the Last Supper. He did not cling to his equality with God but accepted death on a cross.

The reason that we celebrate the cruel and horrifying events of Good Friday is that what happened on Calvary was also a great act of love and of trust: “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” ( Lk 23:46 ). Greater love has no one than this – to lay down his life for his friends. That is how the incarnate Son of God showed us the way.

That is the meaning of our lives – to give ourselves to one another and to God, because that is our only true hope. Only God can overcome death; only God is stronger than cruelty, injustice, betrayal and disillusionment and greater than our most extravagant hopes.

That is what we prayed at the beginning of our Mass; that is what we pray during the coming week; that is the prayer that expresses the great hope that only God can give:

Almighty, ever-living God,

you have give the human race Jesus Christ our Saviour as a model of humility.

He fulfilled your will by becoming man and giving his life on the Cross.

Help us to bear witness to you by following his example of suffering

and making us worthy to share in his resurrection, Through Christ our Lord.

+Donal Murray