The
Most Solemn Day of the Year
There is no
need for verbiage on this day, Good Friday. The most powerful sermon
ever preached was given by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as He hung
on the gibbet of the Holy Cross for three hours, nailed there by our
sins having transcended time. Our Lord spoke very few words as He died
a painful death by asphyxiation. The power in His preaching was the
suffering He endured to pay back in His Sacred Humanity the blood debt
of our own sins to Himself in His Infinity as God. His death on this
very day destroyed the power of sin and eternal death forever, making
it possible for each of us to join the Good Thief in Heaven if only
we persevere to the point of our dying breaths in states of sanctifying
grace.
As I note
in my protracted Holy Week reflection on this site, "Passing Over
from Death to Life," Good Friday belongs in a special way to Our
Lady. She was present at the foot of the Cross as she gave birth us
as the adopted sons and daughters of the living God. She is present--along
with all of the angels and saints--at every offering of the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass, which is the unbloody re-presentation of her Divine Son's
one Sacrifice to the Father in Spirit and in Truth. We must keep close
to her this day, calling to mind that the perfection of the communion
between her own Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of her Divine
Son caused her to suffer as no purely human being could ever suffer.
She kept a silent vigil by the foot of the Cross. We must mirror her
silence this day, placing ourselves totally in her maternal care so
that we will grieve--truly grieve--for each of our sins and that we
will resolve to have such a perfect love for God that even the thought
of sin may become as repulsive to us as it was for saints such as the
Little Flower, Saint Therese of Lisieux.
This, the
most solemn day of the year, is a day to withdraw from all of the activities
of the world. This is not a day for conversation or socializing. This
is a day of mourning. We assist at the Mass of the Presanctified in
a spirt of solemnity and sobriety, leaving it after the reception of
Holy Communion as quietly as most faithful Catholics file out of a movie
theatre after seeing The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson's
masterpiece should remind us that the reverent silence that characterizes
its end should be the sort of silence we maintain always while in church,
ever more so as we leave church following the Mass of the Presanctified
on this day, Good Friday. If we can be silent after a movie depicting
the events of Our Lord's Passion and Death, we can be silent after the
actual liturgical commemoration of them on Good Friday.
Yes, we know
that we will be celebrating Our Lord's Easter victory over sin and death
with the Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday evening and Easter Sunday Mass.
However, this day, the only day in the liturgical year on which the
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not offered and Our Lord's Real Presence
is hidden from the faithful for public adoration, must be reserved for
calling to mind the horror of sin and the love and mercy Our Lord extended
to us, His executioners.
Every Mass
gives us an opportunity to transcend time and to be present on the "right"
side of the Cross to make up for the fact that our sins had placed us
on the wrong side of the Cross nearly two millennia ago. And the Immemorial
Mass of Tradition communicates the solemnity of Calvary in many ways
throughout the liturgical year, preparing us to enter more deeply into
the mysteries of redemptive love shown us by God in the flesh as He
was nailed to the Holy Cross. The Mass is the extension of Calvary in
time, which is why it can never become a carnival or an expression of
community self-congratulations replete with jokes and back-slapping.
The Mass must reflect the reverence and solemnity of what happened once
in time on Good Friday and is re-presented in an unbloody manner at
the hands of an alter Christus acting in persona Christi.
The perfection of the Traditional Latin Mass in communicating this reverence
and solemnity has been such over the centuries that it succeeded in
producing scores upon scores of saints during epochs when few people
could read. These saints learned from the eloquent lessons preached
by the very solemnity and reverence communicated in all of the component
parts of the Traditional Mass, just as Our Lord preached so eloquently
as He suffered and died once in time on this very day.
We must thank
Our Lord today for His gift to us of our Redemption, a gift which we
did not and do not merit. We must thank Him for the gift of the true
Church. And those of us who have embraced, perhaps much later than we
should have, the glories of the Church's authentic tradition must thank
Him and His Blessed Mother for helping us to see that the sermon preached
on Calvary can heard most effectively today if Catholics assist at the
Mass where everything points to the Cross of the Divine Redeemer--and
from there to the glories of an unending Easter Sunday in Paradise if
we remain faithful to the point of our dying breaths.
Our Lady of Sorrows,
whose Immaculate Heart was pierced by the sword of sorrow prophesied
by Simeon, pray for us this day, Good Friday, 2004, so that we will
withdraw from the world and thus draw close to you as we console you
for what our sins and ingratitude and indifference caused you and your
Divine Son to suffer, so that we might be with you in the gaze of the
Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for all eternity.
