Good Friday 2022 – The Primacy of Love Part 2
Lord, our God. You are the clear demonstration of yourself.
You are Joyful Love. You are Boundless Good.
You see the union between yourself and that external
existence which
Owes you the highest love, even if there were nothing
created that has
Betrayed your Love. You see the Christ who comes as the One
Who is Pure Love, who suffers and redeems your people. Amen.
This is a prayer of John Duns Scotus, that thirteenth
century Franciscan Friar and theologian who, as we listen to his prayer,
asserts that Sin is not the reason for Christ, Love is. “For all eternity God
has willed to love a creature to grace and glory. Before the stars were born,
Christ was in the heart of God, ‘hidden since the foundation of the world’ (Colossians
1:26). Whether or not Sin ever entered into history, Christ would have come;
Christ is first in God’s intention to love and to create.”[i]
Perhaps I have always sensed what Duns Scotus says is true.
Perhaps that is why I have never found walking the Stations of the Cross all
that helpful for me personally. Especially since a number of the 14 stations
are not scenes from the four Evangelists description of The Passion of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Chalk that up to the Protestant in me!
Years ago, I used to have children draw the six “biblical”
stations, and then walk around the church or outdoors and look at and pray with
each drawing. I shall never forget one little girl drew “Jesus takes up the
cross.” There in her drawing was Jesus who looked very tall and mighty, holding
a tiny cross in one hand! I thought, “Jesus makes the cross looks so small!”
And this is one of the fundamental truths of Good Friday, and what makes it so
Good: Jesus, the Love of God in Jesus the Christ, makes the Cross, and the
Roman Empire which nailed him to the Cross, and all human Power Structures
which try to contain and limit Love, look so very very small.
Several days a week I have been spending time at the Shrine
of St. Anthony, a Franciscan Friary. I’ve tried to walk the outdoor Stations of
the Cross, but what speaks to my heart in the language of Duns Scotus is a
statue of Saint Maximillian Kolbe, that Polish Franciscan priest who while
interned at Auschwitz, witnessed 10 men who were chosen to be starved to death
in retribution for one who had tried to escape. One of the 10 cried out, “My
wife! My children!” Kolbe volunteered to take his place, thus saving his life.
According to an eyewitness, who was an assistant janitor at
that time, in his prison cell Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer. Each time the
guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell
and looking calmly at those who entered. After they had been starved and
deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe remained alive. The guards wanted
the bunker emptied, so they gave Kolbe a lethal injection of carbolic acid.
Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for the deadly
injection. He died on 14 August 1941. His remains were cremated on 15 August,
the feast day of the Assumption of Mary.
I often sit or stand in front of the life-size statue of
Saint Maximillian Kolbe, praying for Ukraine, praying for all who suffer. And
as I look into his face, I think, “He sure makes the Cross look small.” Father
Kolbe looks more like the Love of God incarnate than the stations of the cross
that surround his little shrine.
In the chapel at the Friary, there is a statue of a woman,
holding a cross. The cross is really a cross shaped mirror with a wooden frame
around it, and the face of Christ is at the center of the cross pieces. As I
stand before it, my face is reflected in the mirror just below the face of
Christ – the face of Love Incarnate. I used to think the woman was his mother,
Mary of Nazareth, until I learned that Saint Claire of Assisi, Francis’s
sister, was known as “The Mirror Saint” because she “drew her spiritual
insights from her deep reflection on the cross of Jesus Christ. She wrote to her
friend, Agnes of Prague that the cross reflects our true image. ‘Gaze on this
cross every day,’ she admonished Agnes, ‘and study your face within it, so that
you may be adorned with virtues within and without … when our face expresses
what fills the heart, then we image Christ, the image of love incarnate – God’s
unconditional agape love.”[ii]
What were they thinking when they nailed Jesus to the cross?
Did they think they could somehow kill Love? That Love would die on a Roman
Cross? That that would be the end of Love?
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is
finished." Then he bowed his head and handed over his spirit. We who gaze
upon the cross year in and year out on Good Friday, we who are to study our
faces within it, so that we may be adorned with virtues within and without: we
are the recipients of his Spirit. When our faces express what fills the heart
of the Christ who was nailed to the cross as his final act of God’s Love for us
all, it is then that we image Christ in all that we do and all that we say. It
is then that we can truly seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our
neighbor as ourself. It is then that we can strive for Justice and Peace for
all persons, respecting the dignity of every human being.
It is then that our lives become Good News for the whole
world, and everything therein. It is this transfiguration of our hearts that
makes Good Friday so Good.
Lord, our God. You are the clear demonstration of yourself.
You are Joyful Love. You are Boundless Good.
You see the union between yourself and that external
existence which
Owes you the highest love, even if there were nothing
created that has
Betrayed your Love. You see the Christ who comes as the One
Who is Pure Love, who suffers and redeems your people.
Sin is not the reason for Christ – Love is. Amen.
[ii] Ibid, p.50.
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