Good Friday has no celebration of the Eucharist, due to an ancient tradition of the Church, more or less explicable. Instead, a “Liturgical Action” is celebrated, which has four parts: the reading of the Word, prayer, the adoration of Christ Crucified, and communion.
The center of the celebration is Jesus crucified. The aspect of Jesus’ humiliation is emphasized, the submission to the cross of man, out of love, to save.
ISAIAH 52, 13 – 53, 12
Behold, my Servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted, lifted up, and very high. Just as many were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—so shall he startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand.
Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
At the end of the Book of Isaiah, in four texts, there appears a somewhat enigmatic figure, which has been called “The Servant of Yahweh.” It is the vivid antithesis of the triumphant Davidic Messiah. In contrast to the figure of the powerful presence of God coming from power, the figure of the “suffering servant,” the one who bears the guilt of others. It is the theology of the cross, in all its rawness.
In today’s text, it is the fourth “song of the Servant.” In it is expressed, with tremendous clarity, the theology of the cross, in its first, prophetic stage. It is impressive to see with what surprising accuracy this text, written centuries before, can be applied to Jesus. With reason the Church has understood it as “prophetic,” as an inspired announcement of what would be fulfilled in Jesus.
But even more significant is the inversion that the text implies: the destruction of all triumphalist messianism: the announcement that Jesus is not the King who comes with power, but the one who takes away the sin of the world by his cross and resurrection. It is not about the triumphant messianic presence but about the unconditional surrender, even through suffering to the point of giving life.
HEBREWS 4, 14 – 5, 10
Since then we have such a great high priest who has passed through the heavens—Jesus, the Son of God—let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need….
Although… he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
This reading is partly familiar to us from the fifth Sunday of Lent. The letter to the Hebrews compares Jesus to the High Priest of the temple in Jerusalem who, being a sinful man like the others, offers sacrifices for the people. Thus, Jesus, one of us, assumes the life and death of man as a sacrifice pleasing to God.
The text has very similar content to the reading from Paul to the Philippians that we read on Palm Sunday.
It is very possible that all this symbolism, so characteristic of the Old Testament, seems distant to us. But it was very significant for those communities that were still so close to the Old Covenant, for whom the sacrifices of the Temple still held so much value.
Understanding Jesus in terms of the sacrifices of the Temple was easy and expressive for them, but it is not so much for us. We therefore read the text with a sense of communion with those followers of Jesus, so distant from us in their culture and symbols, and so close in the same faith.
However, this whole set of symbolic expressions, taken from the Temple and its sacrifices, tells us very little, and even leads us to a priestly-sacrificial conception that is far from the essence of the message. It would be advisable to replace this text with one of the many that can give a deeper meaning to the reading of the Passion.
We propose the following:
ACTS 2:14-36
Then Peter, standing with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed them:
«Fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say.
Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it.
Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: «Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.»’ Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.»
The point is to give meaning to the reading of the Passion: it is not important to focus on the bloody death or to base our contemplation simply on compassion. The reading of the Passion is a challenge to faith: it was for the disciples and it is for us.
That is why it is important to make from the beginning an act of faith in the crucified, as Peter proposes. This is the first public manifestation of faith of the community of those who follow the crucified.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.