GOOD FRIDAY MEDITATION:
“IT IS FINISHED (Jn 19:30).”
Summary vid + full text.
“It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!’…(Lk 23:44-46)”and said, “‘It is finished’. And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit (Jn 19:30).”
“Now it is all over. The work of our Redemption has been accomplished. We are now children of God, because Jesus has died for us and his death has ransomed us. ‘Empti enim estis pretio magno! (1 Cor 6:20), you and I have been bought at a great price.’
We must bring into our life, to make them our own, the life and death of Christ. We must die through mortification and penance, so that Christ may live in us through Love. And then follow in the footsteps of Christ, with a zeal to co-redeem all mankind. We must give our life for others. That is the only way to live the life of Jesus Christ and to become one and the same thing with him” (St. Josemaría, “The Way of the Cross,” Station XIV).
Our Lord “loved us till the end.” He continues to love us in our failures, in our miseries and despite our sins. God does not leave us abandoned to ourselves. He intensely loves us till the end which impelled Him to assume our human flesh in order to die for us on the Cross.
LET CONTEMPLATE JESUS ON THE CROSS. From the Cross we contemplate Christ who loved us with a love which knows no limits, no bounds; with a love unafraid and willing to bear physical and moral pain, inhumane cruelty and suffering, and even death on the Cross, for the sake of the beloved ─for our sake─ for our salvation.
JESUS ON THE CROSS IS “THE SOURCE OF IMMORTAL LIFE, THE SCHOOL OF JUSTICE AND PEACE, THE UNIVERSAL PATRIMONY OF PARDON AND MERCY. IT IS PERMANENT PROOF OF AN OBLATIVE AND INFINITE LOVE that brought God to become man, vulnerable like us, even to dying crucified. His nailed arms are open to each human being and they invite us to draw near to him, certain that he accepts us and clasps us in an embrace of infinite tenderness .”
(Benedict XVI, Address after the Via Crucis, March 21, 2008)
Dear brethren in Christ, we can never thank Our Lord enough for the Love He has shown us by humiliating Himself in Bethlehem, in Nazareth, during His Passion and by totally giving Himself on the Cross and in the Holy Eucharist…
From His part, “It is finished.” He fulfilled His work of our Redemption. Yet, from our part, while we are in this earthly journey, it isn’t.
- Jesus now wants us to apply in our lives what He gained for us through His Passion and Death, by striving daily to follow and imitate Christ and live His life in our life, making Him the criteria, motive and end of our daily conduct.
“Follow me.”“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps (1 Pet 2:21).” “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children (Eph 5:1).” For “whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked (1Jn 2:6).”
Let us thank the Most Blessed Trinity ─not only with words nor with feelings─ but with deeds of daily self-abnegation and self-giving in the most ordinary events of our daily life, obediently fulfilling God’s Will as Jesus Christ had taught us with His Life with the end of pleasing God out of love in all our thoughts, words and actions, without being afraid of the Cross, as Christ’s way of love is that of sacrifice and the former does not exist without the latter.
- LOVE AND SACRIFICE ARE INSEPARABLE AS SHOWN TO US PAR EXCELLENCE BY OUR LORD. If we really love Jesus, let us also be ready to renounce ourselves so that Christ would be really the center of our existence.
- If we really want to tread on the same footsteps our Lord treaded upon during his life on earth and follow him faithfully, WE SHOULD BE WILLING TO LIVE OUR LIFE NOT FOR OURSELVES BUT FOR GOD, as what Jesus did during His entire life on earth.
- ONLY THROUGH THIS MANNER, FOLLOWING HIM CLOSELY, LIVING FOR HIM AND IN HIM, IDENTIFYING OURSELVES WITH HIM ─THROUGH HIS PASSION AND DEATH─, WE WILL BE BROUGHT TO THE GLORY OF HIS RESURRECTION…and thereby to ETERNAL HAPPINESS!
God, who by the Passion of Christ your Son, our Lord, abolished the death inherited from ancient sin by every succeeding generation; grant that just as, being conformed to him, we have borne by the law of nature the image of the man of earth so by the sanctification of grace may we bear the image of the Man of heaven. (Opening prayer, Good Friday).
A Blessed Good Friday to all. Fr. Rolly Arjonillo
SUMMARY VIDEO
N.B.: Just a friendly reminder, today
Good Friday is a day of fasting and abstinence.
SEE AS WELL:
FASTING AND ABSTINENCE. CHURCH LAW AND IMPORTANT FACTS in https://catholicsstrivingforholiness.org/fasting-and-abstinence-church-law-important-facts-dispensation/
VIDEO REFLECTION
TOPIC: WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT THIS FRIDAY?
Today is Good Friday. A time to be quiet. Perhaps, it is really quiet. We are home. We are grieving. The world has come to a stop. An invisible enemy has rampaged throughout our neighborhoods sowing fear, leaving death in its wake. There is nothing good about it.Yet, as we ponder, we begin to understand. There is good.
PHOTO SOURCE: Juan de Mesa, “Cristo de la Buena Muerte” (1602) scanned from “Pasión en Sevilla”, n. 75, March 2015, Venta exclusiva con ABC de Sevilla, p. 52.
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