Immersed in Christ: Good Friday: April 2, 2021
Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion
The Responsorial Psalm encourages us to entrust our lives totally to God:
"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." (Psalm 31).
We saw on the first Sunday of Lent there is only one cause of all the pain and suffering in the world: sin. And sin is disobedience, the choice people make not to trust God and follow his instructions, but to do what they themselves think will make them happy. In reversal of this, Jesus redeemed the world by an act of supreme obedience in which he abandoned himself to God with absolute trust, even though it seemed he was delivering himself to total destruction. "We accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted." But his trusting obedience saved the world: "Because he surrendered himself to death, he shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses." His final words are the response that will bring our faith, hope, and love to perfection when we are called to surrender ourselves totally and irrevocably to God in death: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."
Hebrews 4:14 to 5:9 focuses on obedience as the key that won and admits us to redemption: Though he was the Son of God, Jesus realized what obedience really is "through what he suffered." By bringing his obedience to perfection through the total surrender of himself on the cross, "he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him." Our first parents' disobedience brought death into the world. The obedience of Jesus restored life. These examples summon us to obey him, growing to perfect obedience as his disciples.
Luke 18:1 to 19:42 shows us Jesus obeying the will of the Father from his first step along the way of the cross: "Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him, went out.." And when he died, he was able to say, "It is finished; I have finished the work you gave me to do" (see John 17:4). Through his obedience he saved us all - and did so at the very moment when his enemies, speaking for all who would reject him, rejected all obedience to the Father in favor of enslavement to the power of this world: "We have no king but Caesar!" There is the choice: disobedience, sin and death, or obedience, grace and life. Discipleship is the choice to live life fully by obeying fully: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."
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