“GOOD”
Saint John
Good Friday: 10 April Anno Domini 2020
Father Jay Watson SSP
It is called “Good Friday” because it is Good.
Jesus died on Friday. Jesus is God. God died on Friday. He died for you the guilty one. Jesus was innocent. He was pure and sinless. Jesus did nothing wrong. He did not deserve to be captured, tied up, slapped and punched in the face and head, spit on, mocked, whipped to the point that He may well have died from that scourging (as many did) even without the Crucifixion, had His head slashed and penetrated by long thorns, and finally His Body hammered through the wrists and ankles onto a cross to be lifted up to bleed, asphyxiate, and go into shock. Horribly bad, horribly wrong. But the greatest Good which has ever been done—done for you, and all the world. But the world is not here right now. You are. That suffering and death was done for you.
Good Friday as a Holy Day, and it is that, is not isolated, atomized, or standing alone. It is both part of Passion Week, the natural conclusion of Holy Thursday—the night in which HE was betrayed, but also the first day of the traditional Triduum: The Three Days: Good Friday, Holy Saturday, The Feast of The Resurrection. It’s all Christ Jesus. It’s all Jesus “for you.” That’s it: “for you.”
It should have been you. You should have been arrested in the darkness by thugs and evil brutes. You should have been “bagged, tagged, and gagged” and hustled off to an interrogation room to be slapped around and spit on. You should have been beaten and then nailed up on a tree.
You don’t think that way because you probably have never done anything that you consider “really” “all that bad.”
Don’t cry for Jesus. Don’t get all emotionally distraught for “poor” Christ. Good Friday should never become a dramatic presentation or a show-inducing tableau of feigned feelings. Repent. Just repent. Listen to yourselves as you say the words on page 15 & 16: “I a poor and miserable sinner…justly deserve Thy temporal and eternal punishment.” Are you or are you not “sinful and unclean?” That’s the bad! Be contrite and sorrowful over that bad, and be joyous and grateful and at peace this evening, even Good Friday evening because THAT’s why Jesus suffered and died.
The Holy Spirit moves you up to the skull of Calvary, to stand under the Summit of Salvation at the Mountain of Mercy. The same Holy Spirit that you acknowledged on Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent all those days ago…seemingly years ago, now, under the blight of this pandemic. I then, asked you the fourth question: “Do you promise that with the aid of the Holy Ghost you will henceforth amend your sinful life? Then declare so by saying—I do promise.” I heard your reply, and, so did The Lord.
Christ’s words through John the Baptist, to you: “bring forth fruits worthy of repentance” [Lk. 3.8]
And when you don’t, not as you should, HE DOES. Jesus does it all. That mountain of Golgotha on the Third Day—Sunday—bathes you in Righteousness in Absolution and Holy + Meal. What a Good Sunday because of Good Friday.
It is + Finished
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