Our People

Homily for Good Friday

Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, Watson’s Bay

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
21/3/2008

Two planks of wood, known as the World Youth Day Cross, were given to the youth of the world by Pope John Paul a generation ago. They have now been to every corner of the world and, most recently, to every part of Australia. So far something like 400,000 young Australians have come into contact with that cross. They have taken it into Parliament, to Uluru, the Barrier Reef, tiny rural and Aboriginal settlements, to schools and universities and shopping malls and sporting stadiums – indeed everywhere of importance to them. There have been so many moving scenes of those young people at the foot of that cross – touching, kissing, holding it; carrying, kneeling or standing silently before it; crying, smiling, praying. It is a portent of a great out-pouring of grace to come for our country and for the young people of the world at World Youth Day in July. But already we must ask: what is it that draws those young people to the cross? What is in their minds as they kneel so reverently or as they come from all around to touch it, to be with it?

When I am lifted up, said Christ, I will draw all men to myself. Lifted up to heaven, to be sure, but first lifted up upon the cross. In chapter 12 of John’s Gospel, Jesus enters triumphant into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Now was the hour for him to be glorified, but his soul was troubled. He realized how that glorification would come about: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but ‘dead’ and buried in the ground it germinates and “bears much fruit”. Only when I am lifted up will I draw humanity to myself; only when I am cast down into the earth will I bring them new life. And so, John reports, Jesus "cried out" a cry of exasperation, pleading with them to believe in him.

It is not the first time Jesus has yelled with all his might. The first sound which God-made-man made to us was at Christmas, and it was the scream of a new-born baby. He yelled again when his friend Lazarus died, crying out with a cry deep enough to raise the dead. (Jn ch 11) Around 3 p.m. on Good Friday, St Matthew told us in last Sunday's Passion, "Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani – my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? And then, crying out in a loud voice, he yielded up his spirit (Mt 27:45-50). Jesus is God crying out in a human voice. God in the depths of our anguish, fear, fury, suffering. Crying out at the injustice, the loneliness, the pain. Jesus is Emmanuel, God-with-us, com-passio, with us even in those most inarticulate, desperate moments, when all we can do is cry out. Jesus Christ is, forever, the Cry of God.

There is a hint, I think, about the drawing power of that cross. Young people – and people of all ages – bring to it their needs and anxieties, their griefs and fears, that there Christ himself might articulate them for them, that there they might know that God is with them and for them.

But Christ is more than this. He is also the Logos: God’s reason, argument, explanation, com-unicatio, spoken by God from all eternity. In the beginning of Creation, God spoke and there was light, and matter, and order, and life, and humanity. In the beginning of the New Creation God spoke again, and “the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (Jn 1:14). God-made-one-of-us didn’t just cry. Jesus is God, speaking to us with gentle consoling words, with hard challenging words. He preached, he invited, he commanded. His word attracted, converted, cured.

Young people – and the not so young – come to the cross not only to hear the cry of God but also the reasons. We all, but especially when we are youthful, search for meaning, for purpose. What is my life for? What, who, can I love? To what, to whom can I entrust my whole life? And even from the cross, God speaks his words. Today you will be with me in Paradise. Forgive them Father. I thirst. This is your Mother, this your son. Into your hands I commend my spirit. It is accomplished. Right to the end he gave us the words of God. Words that save. And in due course he would speak again, at his Resurrection, in his Church, in her Scriptures and tradition, in her preaching and doing. Jesus Christ is, forever, the Word of God.

We come to the cross to hear the Cry and the Word of God, the compassion and the communication of God. But his first night was the ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’. Though those with ears to hear heard angels, he came unannounced into the silence of the night. And he slipped away alike on the night before he died, back out into the quiet. At his trials, though he said a few telling words, he mostly said nothing. "Like a lamb to the slaughter house," they said, "harshly dealt with, he never opened his mouth." (Isa 53:7; Acts 8:32) In the end he sighed and "bowing his head he gave up the ghost" (Jn 19:30 KJV).

Jesus is the cry of the human heart and of God’s heart. Jesus is the language of the human mind and of God's mind. But he is also the ineffable mystery – that wholly other, wordless, soundless, silent, awesome, inscrutability of God and man. Now the Word of God is mute. Struck dumb. Silent. God is dead. No more loud yelling. No more quiet whispers. No more consoling words. Suffering and death are beyond words. So, ultimately, are human beings and their God, and that joining of man to God we call salvation. And so we go down into the silence of the tomb, into the depths of the earth. Nowhere is quieter. Nowhere more silent.

Will there be more? Dare we hope for sounds and songs, for words and meaning and hope again? Part Three and the Climax of this Liturgy is tomorrow night. There may yet be a joyful sound, a telling word, a cause for hope. Come back to hear...