'Did a God indeed in dying cross my life that day?' Good Friday

The Agony in the Garedn

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

The First Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

First Reading Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)  

See, my servant shall prosper;
    he shall be exalted and lifted up,
    and shall be very high.
Just as there were many who were astonished at him
    —so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
    and his form beyond that of mortals—
so he shall startle many nations;
    kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
    and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
Who has believed what we have heard?
    And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a young plant,
    and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
    a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities
    and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
    struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
    and by his bruises we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.

By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
    Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
    stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
    and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
    and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
    he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.

Out of his anguish he shall see light;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
    The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
    and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

The Scourging of Christ

Vecellio Tiziano [Web Gallery of Art]

The Second Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary

This is the talk givenby Pope Benedict XVI after the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday, 22 April 2011. I have highlighted some parts of his message.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This evening, in faith, we have accompanied Jesus as he takes the final steps of his earthly journey, the most painful steps, the steps that lead to Calvary. We have heard the cries of the crowd, the words of condemnation, the insults of the soldiers, the lamentation of the Virgin Mary and of the women. Now we are immersed in the silence of this night, in the silence of the cross, the silence of death. It is a silence pregnant with the burden of pain borne by a man rejected, oppressed, downtrodden, the burden of sin which mars his face, the burden of evil. Tonight we have re-lived, deep within our hearts, the drama of Jesus, weighed down by pain, by evil, by human sin.

What remains now before our eyes? It is a crucified man, a cross raised on Golgotha, a cross which seems a sign of the final defeat of the One who brought light to those immersed in darkness, the One who spoke of the power of forgiveness and of mercy, the One who asked us to believe in God’s infinite love for each human person. Despised and rejected by men, there stands before us ‘a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, one from whom others hide their faces’ (Is 53:3).

But let us look more closely at that man crucified between earth and heaven. Let us contemplate him more intently, and we will realize that the cross is not the banner of the victory of death, sin and evil, but rather the luminous sign of love, of God’s immense love, of something that we could never have asked, imagined or expected: God bent down over us, he lowered himself, even to the darkest corner of our lives, in order to stretch out his hand and draw us to himself, to bring us all the way to himself. The cross speaks to us of the supreme love of God and invites, today, to renew our faith in the power of that love, and to believe that in every situation of our lives, our history and our world, God is able to vanquish death, sin and evil, and to give us new, risen life. In the Son of God’s death on the cross, we find the seed of new hope for life, like the seed which dies within the earth.

This night full of silence, full of hope, echoes God’s call to us as found in the words of Saint Augustine: ‘Have faith! You will come to me and you will taste the good things of my table, even as I did not disdain to taste the evil things of your table... I have promised you my own life. As a pledge of this, I have given you my death, as if to say: Look! I am inviting you to share in my life. It is a life where no one dies, a life which is truly blessed, which offers an incorruptible food, the food which refreshes and never fails. The goal to which I invite you … is friendship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, it is the eternal supper, it is communion with me … It is a share in my own life’ (cf. Sermo 231, 5).

Let us gaze on the crucified Jesus, and let us ask in prayer: Enlighten our hearts, Lord, that we may follow you along the way of the cross. Put to death in us the ‘old man’ bound by selfishness, evil and sin. Make us ‘new men’, men and women of holiness, transformed and enlivened by your love.

The Crowning with Thorns

Caravaggio [Web Gallery of Art]

The Third Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary

I'm preparing this on Wednesday of Holy Week. Just today The Catholic Thing website carries an article by Randall Smith, It's Part of the Deal, Isn't It? that provides food for reflection and prayer at this time, especially on Good Friday. He asks his students to reflect on the choices made by the Trappist monks in Tibhirine, Algeria, who were martyred in 1996, and by the villagers of Le Chambon, France, who protected many Jews during World War II.

Recently, students in our Honors class were reading The Rule of St. Benedict. I then had them watch the 2010 film Of Gods and Men about the Trappist monastery in Tibhirine, Algeria, where nine French monks lived and worked until 1996 when, during the Algerian Civil War, seven of them were kidnapped by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria and later found beheaded.

I won’t go into why I pair the movie with the book, other than to say that the movie does a nice job of portraying the Benedictine life, both its challenges and its understated beauties.  Seeing it portrayed in this way helps make the Rule seem less alien.  Rather than asking, “What kind of bizarre person would choose to live this way?” they see it as something more desirable, something worth choosing.

One of the additional questions the movie poses for us, however, is whether the monks made the right decision to stay in Algeria when the violence in their area increased and mortal danger became more threatening.  The movie does a good job of showing how conflicted the monks were.  They were far from determined to embrace martyrdom and rush to their deaths.  At one meeting, a monk says point-blank:  “I didn’t become a monk to die.” 

Continue here.

Christ Carrying the Cross

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary

The Killing

By EdwinMuir

That was the day they killed the Son of God

On a squat hill-top by Jerusalem.

Zion was bare, her children from their maze

Sucked by the dream of curiosity

Clean through the gates. The very halt and blind

Had somehow got themselves up to the hill.

After the ceremonial preparation,

The scourging, nailing, nailing against the wood,

Erection of the main-trees with their burden,

While from the hill rose an orchestral wailing,

They were there at last, high up in the soft spring day.

We watched the writhings, heard the moanings, saw

The three heads turning on their separate axles

Like broken wheels left spinning. Round his head

Was loosely bound a crown of plaited thorn

That hurt at random, stinging temple and brow

As the pain swung into its envious circle.

In front the wreath was gathered in a knot

That as he gazed looked like the last stump left

Of a death-wounded deer's great antlers. Some

Who came to stare grew silent as they looked,

Indignant or sorry. But the hardened old

And the hard-hearted young, although at odds

From the first morning, cursed him with one curse,

Having prayed for a Rabbi or an armed Messiah

And found the Son of God. What use to them

Was a God or a Son of God? Of what avail

For purposes such as theirs? Beside the cross-foot,

Alone, four women stood and did not move

All day. The sun revolved, the shadows wheeled,

The evening fell. His head lay on his breast,

But in his breast they watched his heart move on

By itself alone, accomplishing its journey.

Their taunts grew louder, sharpened by the knowledge

That he was walking in the park of death,

Far from their rage. Yet all grew stale at last,

Spite, curiosity, envy, hate itself.

They waited only for death and death was slow

And came so quietly they scarce could mark it.

They were angry then with death and death's deceit.

I was a stranger, could not read these people

Or this outlandish deity. Did a God

Indeed in dying cross my life that day

By chance, he on his road and I on mine?

The Crucifixion

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

The Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary

Caoineadh na dTrí Muire - The Lament of the Three Marys

This is part of a traditional hymn in Irish Gaelic.

Verse 1
Nó an é sin an maicín a h-oileadh in ucht Mháire?
Óchón agus óchón-ó
An é sin an maicín a d'iompar mé trí raithe?
Óchón agus óchón-ó

Is that the son nourished at Mary's breast

'Alas and woe to me'
Or is that the son I carried three terms
'Alas and woe to me'

Verse 2
Nó an é sin an maicín a rugadh insan stábla?
Óchón agus óchón-ó
A mhicín a mhúirneach, tá do shrón 's do bhéailín gearrtha
Óchón agus óchón-ó

Or is that the son born in the stable

'Alas and woe to me'
My son my darling your nose and mouth are cut
'Alas and woe to me'

Verse 3
Cuireadh táirní maola trína cosa is trína lámha
Óchón agus óchón-ó
Cuireadh an tsleá trína bhrollach álainn
Óchón agus óchón-ó

Blunt nails were driven through his feet and hands

'Alas and woe to me'
The spear was put through his beautiful chest
'Alas and woe to me'

Thanks to the Irish Dominicans who posted this on YouTube.