Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

With the seven words of Christ and the Cross … “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit”. The words of Jesus Christ on the Cross call us to trust and love as God’s children filled with the Holy Spirit.

The evangelists refer to Christ’s seven words on the Cross. We discover in them how much God the Father loved us, to the extent that he gave his Son to die so that we could become sons in him.

1. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23, 34). The Lord asks forgiveness for our sins. “When he ascended the cross, he bore our sins on his own body, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness” (1 Pt 2, 24). Christ dies to save us. It calls us to do good and to endure suffering. The secret of forgiveness is a love that understands the weakness of others because we know that we are filled with God’s Love.

2. “Truly, I say to you: Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23, 43). Forgiveness again. The excellent thief repents and hears the promise of salvation. The word “paradise” of Persian origin recalls the garden of happiness: the first garden at creation. Jesus makes it clear that happiness is to be with him. As Saint Gregory of Nazianzus says, “If you are crucified with him as a thief, trust your God like a good thief.”

3. “When Jesus saw the mother and with her the disciple whom he loved, he said to the mother: Woman, behold your son!” Then he said to the disciple: Behold your mother! And from that hour, the disciple took her to himself” (Jn 19, 25-28). The Virgin Mary “accepts with love the offering of the victim she conceived.” She has no other son than Jesus. By accepting his death on the Cross, she receives us all as her daughters and sons in Saint John: she is the Mother of the Church.

4. “The whole earth was covered with darkness. Jesus cried out with a loud voice: Eli, Eli, lemah sabachthani? – that means: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27, 46). They are words from Psalm 22(21), which end with confidence in the goodness of God the Father and the future growth of the Church: “The whole earth will remember and turn to the Lord; all the families of the nations shall bow before him” (v. 28). Christ’s suffering on the Cross existed simultaneously with the immediate vision of God. At the same time, as St. Augustine says, we were also on the Cross because we are his body, which is the Church: Christ spoke for each of us.

5. “I thirst” (Jn 19, 28). This cry expresses the Lord’s humanity amid great suffering as He suffocates on the Cross. He also thirsts for our Love, which can ease the pain in his heart. His glory, the radiance of His love, is our participation in God’s life. “More than the weariness of the body, the thirst for souls consumes him.” He looks at us from the Cross in the Father’s eternal Love. Thirst for our thirst. And he has a great thirst to send us the Holy Spirit.

6. “It is finished” (Jn 19, 30). It is fulfillment. Jesus loved in obedience to the extreme (cf. Jn 3, 34; 13, 1). With the fullness of the Spirit, his offering to the Father is without measure. He fulfilled the Father’s will. At the same time, he is surrendered, drained, and exhausted. We contemplate the mystery of Love rather than pain. Above all, Jesus’ Love for the Father and the world is on the Cross. To the very end, what it means to be entirely the Son of God is manifested in him.

7. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23, 46). In the light of Jn 19, 30 – “he gave up his spirit” – the Church sees the gift of the Holy Spirit. Christ dies for the Love of God, for following his plan of salvation, and for Love for us. He dies “once for all” (1 Pt 3, 18). His human soul is separated from the body, which no longer has an animating principle. He died as a man, willingly, in the same way that a man suffers grief to separate himself from another man—death overcome by Love. The deity remains attached to the holy body, awaiting resurrection. We watch over him with sadness and hope.

In Christ’s seven words, we find the forgiveness of our sins, the promise to be with Jesus, the gift of the Virgin as Mother, the prayer full of trust, the request, the fulfillment, and the gift of the Spirit. “To lay down one’s life for others. That is the only way to live the life of Jesus Christ and identify with him”. Because “there is only one way to live on earth: to die with Christ, so that we can rise with him from the dead until we can say with the apostle: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20)”. We can claim: “We are already God’s children”; and the children of the Blessed Virgin Mary.