62 — THE MYSTERY OF THE CROSS

Good Friday

Presence of God. — O Jesus, grant me to enter with You into the thick of the mystery of the Cross.

Meditation

1 — Good Friday is the day that more than any other invites us to penetrate “into the density of the travails and sorrows of the Son of God” (G.C.C.A. 35, 9; the abbreviation C.A. denotes the first redaction of the last five stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle, published in appendix to that work, edited by Fr. Gabriele of St. Mary Magdalene — Libreria Fiorentina, Florence, 1948) and not only with the theoretical consideration of the mind, but also with the practical disposition of the will to embrace willingly suffering, to associate and assimilate ourselves to the Crucified. Suffering with Him we shall understand better His sufferings, we shall understand better His love for us, since “the most pure suffering carries with it a more intimate and pure understanding” (G.C.C. 36, 12); and “no one feels more profoundly in his heart the Passion of Christ, than he who will have suffered something similar” (Imit. II, 12, 4). With these dispositions let us accompany the Lord in His last earthly day.

The atrocious martyrdom that in a few hours will lacerate His Body has not yet begun and nevertheless the agony of Jesus in the garden of olives marks one of the most painful moments of His Passion and most revelatory of the most bitter sorrows of His spirit. His Most Holy Soul finds itself immersed in an inexpressible anguish: it is abandonment and extreme desolation, without the minimum comfort either from God or from men. The Savior feels gravitating upon Himself the enormous weight of all the sins of humanity; He, most innocent, sees Himself covered with the most execrable crimes, made almost enemy of God, made a target for His infinite justice that will punish in Him all our wickednesses. Certainly, insofar as God, Jesus never ceased, even in the most painful moments of His Passion, to be united to His Father, but insofar as man He felt as if rejected by Him, “struck by God and humbled” (Is. 53, 4). This explains the intimate drama of His spirit — drama much more painful than the terrible physical sufferings that await Him — explains the cruel agony that made Him sweat blood, explains His lament: “My soul is sorrowful even unto death” (Mt. 26, 38). And whereas before He had ardently desired the Passion, now that His humanity finds itself in face of the rude concreteness of the fact, deprived of the sensible succor of the Divinity, which seems not only to withdraw, but also to be indignant against it, Jesus groans: “My Father, if it is possible let this chalice pass from Me!”. But the anguished cry of human nature is soon extinguished in that of the perfect conformity of the will of Christ to the will of the Father: “Yet not as I will, but as You will” (ibid., 39).

2 — To the agony in the garden follows the traitorous kiss of Judas, the capture, the night passed between the interrogations of the priests and the insults of the soldiers who slap Jesus, spit in His face, veil His eyes, while outside, in the atrium, Peter denies Him. At dawn the interrogations and accusations begin again, then begin the various turns from one tribunal to another: from Caiphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, from Herod again to Pilate: follows the horrible flagellation, the coronation of thorns and finally, vested as a mock king, the Son of God is presented to the crowd that yells: “Away with this man, and release Barabbas”, while for Him, the Savior, the populace asks in loud voice: “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” (Lk. 23, 18 and 21). Laden with the wood of the supplice, Jesus is dragged to Calvary and then crucified between two thieves. It is a sum of terrible physical and moral sufferings that reach the maximum when the Lord, agonizing on the cross, launches the cry: “My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?” (Mt. 27, 46).

Behold us once more in face of the intimate drama that rends the Soul of Christ and now accompanies, with a rapid crescendo, the intense increase of His physical sufferings. During the discourse of the Last Supper, speaking of His approaching Passion, He had said to the Apostles: “Behold the hour comes in which you will be dispersed... and will leave Me alone; but I am not alone, because the Father is with Me” (Jn. 16, 32). Union with the Father is everything for Jesus: it is His life, His strength, His comfort and His joy; if men abandon Him, the Father is always with Him and this suffices Him. From this we can understand better the intensity of His sorrow when, during the Passion, the Father withdraws from Him. Yet, even in His agony and His death on the cross, Jesus is always God and as such is always indissolubly united to the Father. But He has taken upon Himself the heavy burden of our sins and these rise up like a barrier of moral division between Him and the Father. His Humanity, although united personally to the Word, finds itself, by a miracle, deprived of every comfort and divine support and feels instead gravitating upon itself the malediction due to sin: “Christ — says St. Paul — has redeemed us from the curse... becoming Himself a curse for us” (Gal. 3, 13). We touch here the depths of the Passion of Jesus, the most atrocious bitternesses that He has embraced for our salvation. And nevertheless, even in the midst of such cruel torments, the lament of Jesus composes itself in the expression of total abandonment: “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit” (Lk. 23, 46). Thus Jesus, who has wished to taste to the very bottom how bitter for man is suffering and dying, teaches us to overcome the disturbances and anguishes caused in us by sorrow and death with acts of full submission to the will of God and of trusting abandonment into His hands.

Colloquy

“O Christ, Son of God, contemplating the great sorrow that You have sustained for us on the cross, I feel You say to my soul: ‘I have not loved you through deception!’ These words open my eyes and clearly I see how much You have done for me, through the effect of this love. I see what You have sustained in life and in death, O passionate God-Man, because of this most visceral and unspeakable love. Yes, O Lord, You have not loved me through deception, but with a most perfect and very true love. And in me I see to be all the contrary, since I love You tepidly and without truth, and to know this is an insupportable pain to me.

“O Master, You have loved me without deception; I instead, sinner, have never loved You, if not with lacking love. And never have I wished to feel any of those sorrows that You willingly suffered on the cross, and thus I have served You with negligence and without truth.

“Your love, my God, excites in me an inflamed desire not to wish to do anything in which there be offense to You, to wish to embrace the sorrow and contempt sustained by You, to keep continually fixed in my mind Your Passion and Death, in which is our true health and life.

“O Lord, O Master and eternal Physician, Your Blood is the medicine that, without any price, You offer us for the healing of our souls and, while to You it cost the most bitter Passion and Death on the cross, to me it costs nothing, if not to dispose myself to receive it and You immediately give it to me and heal my infirmities. My God, since You have disposed to liberate and heal me, provided that I with tears and sorrow show You my evils and my infirmities, Lord, since my soul is infirm, behold I show You my sins and my miseries. No sin can there be, no illness of soul and spirit for which You have not given sufficient remedy and have not satisfied with Your death.

“All my health and my joy is therefore in You, O Christ crucified, yes, in whatever state I may find myself, I never wish to take my gaze from Your cross” (Bl. Angela of Foligno).