Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Good Friday - Friday, April 6, 2012
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25 or
John 18:1-19:42
Christ of St John of the Cross, by Salvador Dali, 1951
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
inspired by a St John of the Cross sketch - voted as Scotland's favorite painting in 2006
We have just heard and experienced a profound expression of the Passion story and I feel like the gild on the lily standing up to preach as if I could say it better. But needs must…
It was the Triduum and the Great Vigil of Easter that clinched my journey into the Catholic tradition. So much of what had been my faith experience had fed my head quite beautifully and fully but mystery tantalized me and drew me beyond my understanding.
That journey has continued: it continues today. In this mystery God draws us beyond what our minds can fathom to a depth that can’t be uttered. It leads to a place within us where we stand with deep longing; a place where we fear to be known and yet fear that we are not known. God has entered that place in the Incarnation and knows these very fears and loneliness and silence that we hold secret.
Each utterance of Jesus from the Cross is a human cry – from the goodness of the heart comes the cry of “Forgiven them”; from the emptiness of the forgotten ones comes the despair of abandonment. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
In this liturgy, we are not celebrating only a transcendent Godhead wonderful in the heavens. We are enraptured by the incarnate love of God in a human, suffering soul. Glory is to come but on this day God echoes the cries of the broken and lonely hearts spurned and mocked by greed, power and wealth. These cries speak of sorrow, suffering and emptiness. But they speak, too, of the triumph of the human spirit through Grace.
I want to read a story about one of these voices of triumph. It came from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and it’s only one of hundreds such stories.
The Commission brought an elderly black woman face to face with the white man, Mr. Van de Broek, who had confessed to the savage torture and murder of her son and her husband a few years earlier. The old woman had been made to witness her husband’s death. The last words her husband spoke were “Father, forgive them.”
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996
One of the members of the commission turned to her and asked, “How do you believe justice should be done to this man who has inflicted such suffering on you and so brutally destroyed your family?”
The old woman replied, “I want three things. I want first to be taken to the place where my husband’s body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial.” She stopped, collected herself, and then went on. “My husband and son were my only family. I want, secondly, therefore, for Mr. Van de Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the location and spend a day with me so that I can pour out to him whatever love I have still remaining in me.
And finally, I want a third thing. I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus died to forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr. Van de Broek in my arms, embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven.
The assistants came to help the old woman across the room. Mr. Van de Broek, overwhelmed by what he had just heard, fainted. And as he did, those in the courtroom—friends, family, neighbors, all victims of decades of oppression and injustice—began to sing “Amazing Grace.”
Life triumphant through love. Transformation of tragedy to victory. Wholeness coming from brokenness… that’s what today means. This is a GOOD Friday – Good and amazing. Thanks be to God.
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