Good Friday leaning into the Easter Vigil

Jesus, whom we encounter in the Good Friday proclamation of the Passion according to John, is the victorious Christ who reveals the glory of God in his dying. What a mystery!

St. Paul announces the foundation for approaching the cross – for we can only uncover the unfolding reality of our complicity in Jesus’ death as we know in our depths the saving power of God in Christ.

“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword…

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.     [Romans 8:35-39]

Judas & Peter, Annas & Caiaphas, the disciples who flee all reveal parts of our lives that resist the intrusion of Grace, its infusion, because, for example, I fear giving up my grudges (power that props up my fear of weakness) and whatever I use to fill my emptiness. Who would I be if I let go?

Instead of embracing my precious yet insufferably relentless vulnerability, I make others pay the price. Hurt people hurt people. People in pain burden others with that very pain.

I only begin to be found there, to be met there, to pray from that terrible yet graced “there” because nothing can separate me, us, from the love of God revealed on the face of Jesus on the cross. 

Now is the Son of Man glorified!

Christ is truly risen!