Liturgical Colour : Red

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today is Good Friday, the day marking Our Lord’s suffering and death on the Cross at Calvary. On this day we remember primarily everything that Our Lord Jesus Himself had done in bearing up all the burdens of our many sins and wickedness, all the evils and corruptions we have had in our lives, the punishments due to them, as He willingly sacrificed and offered Himself on our behalf, giving us the assurance of eternal life and salvation because He, the Paschal Lamb and the High Priest of all of us mankind, had given Himself up and offered Himself as the perfect and worthy for the atonement of all of our many and innumerable sins. It was indeed Good Friday because while we are sorrowful over the suffering and death of Our Lord, but it was indeed ‘Good’ because through this event, all of us have received the assurance of salvation and eternal life.

In order to appreciate and understand this better, we have to go back all the way to the very beginning of time, at the moment of Creation. The Lord created all of creation, all of the whole Universe, and each and every one of the living things in it, and ultimately all of us mankind because He has loved everything that He has created, and He wants to share this overflowing love with each and every one of us. That was why He had created us, and yet, our ancestors from the beginning chose to disobey Him, disregard His commandments and guides, trusting instead in the falsehoods and lies of Satan, who tempted them to sin. They chose to eat from the fruits of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God had told them not to eat from, and thereafter, they sinned against God and were cast out of the Gardens of Eden.

God has always intended for us to enjoy the fullness of His love and grace, and we were never intended to suffer in this world as what we and our ancestors have been experiencing. But it was by our own conscious choice to disobey the Lord, rejecting His generous offer of love, compassion and mercy, His guidance and help, which He has always provided to us along throughout our whole lives, we have therefore turned away from His love and grace, and having to endure the consequences and punishments because of those sins which we have committed. It was never His intention to punish us or see us destroyed, as if He had wished us to be destroyed, He could have just easily done it with the mere whim of His thought and will from the very beginning.

Instead, God has assured all of us that He would be sending us His Saviour, the One Who would bring about the deliverance of all mankind, the whole entire world from the power of sin, evil and death, all of which had dominated over us for a long period of time, as He would not let us all to suffer forever under their dominion and power. From the beginning, the Lord had already proclaimed the ultimate defeat of the evil one, and how He would avenge our forefathers, while gathering all of His faithful ones, all those who cling on to His truth and love, from being scattered all throughout this world, through none other than His own beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus, Who as our Good Shepherd and Guide, laid down His life for us because of His love for us.

In our first reading today, we heard from the passage taken from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, in which the Lord told His people through Isaiah of the prophecy of the coming of the Suffering Servant, the same One Whom God would send into the world to save His people. We heard of how Isaiah described that this Servant of God would face beatings, hardships, sufferings and pains for our sake and on our behalf, so that by His wounds and hurts, His injuries and pains, all of us would be healed and brought towards God’s salvation and grace. This was indeed the prophecy of everything that would happen to Jesus Christ at the moment of His Passion, when He suffered greatly, bearing His Cross and enduring the worst and most humiliating punishments known then, reserved only for the worst criminals.

For the crucifixion was the Romans’ ultimate form of punishment, reserved to the worst offenders and criminals, for those who were found to deserve death for their crimes. In particular, most crucifixions in fact did not involve the criminals being nailed to the Cross, but rather only being hung there on their respective crosses until they all died from thirst and exhaustion, or until they died when their legs were broken if they had not yet died. The Lord’s crucifixion was much worse because He was not just hung on the Cross, but pierced by the nails on His hands and feet, and He was also lashed and tortured, forced to wear the painful crown on thorns upon His head, bleeding and wounded from all over His entire body, stripped and humiliated before everyone to see His Suffering Self.

Thus in the Crucifixion of Our Lord at Calvary, everything that God had promised and prophesied through the prophet Isaiah came true, and as the author of the Epistle of the Hebrews mentioned in our second reading passage today, He, as Our one and true Eternal High Priest, Who has taken up our human nature and existence, obeyed His Father’s will so perfectly, so that He, as the New Adam, would come to the ‘Tree’ of the Cross, and obeying what God has planned for all of us, for our salvation, He would lead us all out of the darkness and reconciling us to our loving and ever merciful Father, Whom we can call Father because Jesus Himself, as the Son of God, through His Incarnation, has become one of us, sharing our human nature, and therefore, we share in His Sonship, becoming the adopted sons and daughters of God.

And through His crucifixion, the Lord Jesus as the New Adam, by His perfect obedience, showed us all the way out of our disobedience, as once caused by the disobedience of the first Adam, and his wife Eve. Together with Mary, His blessed Mother, who is the new Eve, the Lord showed us all the path that we all should follow in our journey towards God, in our pursuit of His salvation and grace. While our forefathers had chosen to disobey the Lord, eating the forbidden fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and wanting to become like God, the Lord Jesus Himself showed us the exact opposite. He showed us all not just perfect obedience, but how God willingly humbled and emptied Himself, that He became a humble being like us, in our broken and imperfect human existence, just like us, with the exception of being without any sin.

Thus, we can see clearly here the opposite ideals shown in the Book of Genesis, when mankind’s fall happened because of a Tree and their disobedience, listening to Satan’s lies and allowing themselves to be swayed by those lies, and being driven by their desires and the temptations in their hearts, on the other hand, mankind’s salvation and return to grace came about because of the other Tree, the Tree of the Cross, upon which the Saviour Himself, the Son and Word of God Incarnate, chose to willingly suffer and die for our sake, in emptying Himself from all glory, and in humbly submitting Himself to His heavenly Father’s will, rejecting earlier on the three temptations of the same Satan, who failed to tempt the Lord with worldly power and glory in the desert.

Now, brothers and sisters in Christ, having understood better the greater idea and appreciation behind the means that the Lord had chosen in saving us, by reversing everything that had happened through our downfall into sin, and raising us up again through His obedience and His Cross, He showed us all the perfect path to redemption. Through His offering as our High Priest and sacrifice of His own Most Precious Body and Blood, broken and outpoured for us from His Cross, He has given us all the perfect offering in atonement for our sins, that no earthly means can give us. Our Paschal Lamb, Christ Himself, has suffered, died and was slain, sacrificed on the Altar of the Cross, and by His offering, truly worthy and acceptable, a most selfless and loving sacrifice made for us, He has saved us all.

Through His suffering and death, Christ has united each and every one of us to His death, which we share through our baptism, where we commit to die to our past sinful way of life, and we are reminded of this fact every time we renew our baptismal promises at Easter. And then, as we are about to celebrate with Easter in just over a day’s time, through His glorious Resurrection, Christ also united us all to His Resurrection, and we are brought into new existence and life, one that is no longer put under the power and dominion of sin and death, but one that is instead filled with God’s grace and love, and directed towards His Holy Presence, bound for eternal life.

That is why each and every one of us should make good use of the time and opportunities which God has given us, and the love He has shown us all from His Cross. As we gaze upon the Cross, looking upon our Crucified Messiah, let us all come to realise that every single wounds inflicted upon Him are our sins, caused by our disobedience against God and our folly in thinking that we know it better than to follow God and His path as we should have done. Let us all keep our focus upon the Cross, with sorrow and regret in our hearts for the many sins which we have committed in our respective lives, and from there, coming with the strong desire to seek God’s forgiveness and mercy, embracing His Son’s most loving sacrifice on the Cross. Let us all embark on this journey of faith, to enter into God’s Redemption and grace, and to be once again in His Loving Presence.

May the Lord Jesus Christ, our Crucified Messiah, be with us always in our journey of faith and life, so that we may also bear our crosses in life and follow Him faithfully. May He continue to help and guide us all, carrying His Cross together with us so that we may continue to persevere and do our best in enduring the many challenges and trials that we may encounter in our journey as Christians, in living our lives ever more faithfully in the path that God has shown and taught us. May God bless us all, at all times, and may He strengthen us all in faith, that we may draw ever closer to Him, now and always. Amen.