Archbishop of Sydney

Good Friday

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
14/4/2006

The crucifixion of Jesus,  is at the centre of our faith, because he was our brother; because He is the son of Mary and Son of God; because He is eternally begotten of the Father.  For all these reasons his crucifixion is at the heart of Holy Week.

It was preceded by the Last Supper, the first celebration of the Eucharist on Thursday, what we now call Holy Thursday and followed by the Resurrection, celebrated on Easter Sunday.  But the crucifixion is at the heart of the matter.

The crucifixion is tough love in action, an ugly violent execution by insensitive men and engineered by even more evil men.  On Jesus’ part however his dying is an unselfish act of love, not just for us, not just for his own people the Jews whom he loved, but for everyone of every age.

This is too much for most of us to take in, especially those of us who celebrate Holy Week year after year.  We are used to the story, which we have heard many times.  We know that Christ is the “new Adam” that he achieved a new start for the whole of humanity, but often we cannot feel in our bones that Jesus has turned everything upside down by his redeeming death.

Jesus was the Messiah, the promised leader awaited by the Jewish people, and through his faithfulness, obedience and sacrificial death.  He has achieved the historical task given to the Jews, God’s chosen people of reconciling to the one true God all of humanity and the entire cosmos.

Through his death, Jesus the Messiah offered salvation to the Gentiles, the non-Jews as well as to His own people.  It is Christ’s followers in faith who are called in particular to be the agents of this redemption, to complete this work whose ultimate success has been guaranteed.

Jesus through his death has turned things upside down, because He is denying that one religion is as good as another.  He is opposed to idolatry, to the worship of false gods.  It is important and valuable to be a follower of Christ, because only through the Church can God’s central work be performed.  I am not claiming for a moment that all is darkness outside God’s people.  Nor am I claiming that the Spirit is inactive among the majority of the world’s population who are non-Christians.  But I am restating Jesus teaching and the conviction of all the New Testament writers that God’s work has been done by Christ and will be completed by his people.

For Paul, God’s people are those who worship in the Spirit, acknowledge that the crucified Jesus is the promised Messiah and put no confidence in the flesh.  That means that Jesus’ death calls us to conversion, to repent of our sins and acknowledge that life is neither a treasure hunt nor a pleasure hunt but a slow and laborious climb up a ladder of love, a persistent effort to purify our heart of its selfishness.

The crucifixion reminds us that while it is necessary to do good and help others, even that is not enough.  We are called to believe explicitly in God’s goodness and have faith in his Son.  Some time ago while on parish visitation a church-going parent told me that his adult child no longer went to Mass regularly, but each week helped the poor; that was his religion.  I pointed out gently that this was good, but not enough and indeed might not be a religious activity at all, as distinct from an act of philanthropy.  The father was pained by what I said, but today it is sometimes necessary to speak of the importance of faith and belief.

That is why every believer whatever the state of his soul can come forward to venerate the cross.  One has to be a baptised believer and in the state of grace to come to receive Communion.  But one only has to believe to kiss the cross.

In Japan there were nearly 300 years of persecution and in fact the faith survived in pockets for all that time without any priests.  The persecuting authorities made those suspected of Christian faith or sympathies step on an image of Christ.  We have one such fumi, at Cathedral House, a much worn image of Jesus taken from the cross upon which the poor unfortunates were forced to formalise their apostasy.  A wonderful novel The Silence by the Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo (Japan’s Graham Greene) tells of this persecution.  When we come up to kiss the cross we publicly reconfirm our faith and its importance.

The cross, the instrument of suffering for the crucified Redeemer, is a sign of hope for all the suffering and sinful, not simply because God’s Son has suffered like we do (and more than most of us), but because the cross is the necessary means to the resurrection, to the final triumph of life over death, of good over evil.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.