As we contemplate Our Lord crucified today, we behold a tragedy, the tragedy of an innocent man publicly executed. Jesus’ only “crime” was to identify himself as the Messiah, and that’s who he was; he did so to the Sanhedrin, so they decided to have him killed, and he did so to Pilate. As today’s Gospel reminds us, Jesus had his ID card hanging right over his head:\u00a0\u201cJesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.\u201d If the execution of a guilty\u00a0man doesn’t give us remorse (and it should, since it presents a failure of all society, not just the criminal), the execution of an innocent man does, or should.<\/p>\n
This\u00a0tragedy is even more profound when we gaze upon the Crucified One and remember that we should have been on that Cross instead of him. An innocent man is dying, brutalized on the Cross, for us. Adam and Eve’s Fall and our sins incurred the death penalty. After all God had given us and done for us, we repaid him by turning our backs on him, again and again. Yet his response leaves us as dumbstruck and confounded as the kings of the world mentioned in today’s First Reading: he takes the punishments we deserve upon himself. He doesn’t just say, “never mind, I forgive you”; he hands himself over to evil men to be tortured and executed. He teaches us how horrible the effects of sin are, not just to us, but to him, and that our sins have consequences.<\/p>\n
Even in his last words Jesus\u00a0asks the Father to forgive us for our ignorance. Today is a day not to dwell on the tragedy we inflicted on the good God who came to save us, but the love with which he did. Let’s die to sin and turn back to God and back to love.<\/p>\n
Readings:\u00a0Isaiah 52:13\u201353:12;\u00a0Psalm 31:2, 6, 12\u201313, 15\u201317, 25;\u00a0Hebrews 4:14\u201316, 5:7\u20139;\u00a0John 18:1\u201319:42.<\/em> See also\u00a0Good Friday, Commemoration of the Lord\u2019s Passion<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we contemplate Our Lord crucified today, we behold a tragedy, the tragedy of an innocent man publicly executed. Jesus’ only “crime” was to identify himself as the Messiah, and that’s who he was; he did so to the Sanhedrin, so they decided to have him killed, and he did so to Pilate. As today’s … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[162,161,9],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-commemoration-of-the-lords-passion","tag-easter-triduum","tag-good-friday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-jo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1204,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}