Good Friday and Christ's Cross

oday, Good Friday, might be the second most important day within Salvation History. For by His holy cross, He has redeemed the world. Today marks the completion of our Lord’s Passion and His death. We are called to reflect especially over Christ’s death and His cross. It is for this reason that the Church prescribes the Veneration of the Cross in today’s liturgy. We are allowed the honor to kiss the wood of the cross, on which hung our salvation. We must remember, though, that we must do more than just love and carry our cross. We must learn to embrace it, even joyfully. This is exactly what true joy is. Joy, not from human accomplishment, but from pain and struggle for nothing but the greater glory of God.This is how we truly unite ourselves to Christ, fulfilling what God desires with us, perfect loving unity.

For this, we can look to Christ as our example. The joy He felt in laying down His life out of love for us out-weighed the pain He experienced in His Passion. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews has us identify Jesus through His sacrificial love of the day of His Crucifixion. “Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which lay ahead, He endured the cross, disregarding the shame of it, and has taken His seat at the right of God's throne,” (Hebrews 12:5). How beautiful is it that our King loves us so much that he puts aside the shame, agony, and pain of torture, beatings, crucifixion, and death, just to save us from death. Christ, the one man who had no need to die, died so we no longer have to.

 Let us pray now from the Vexilla Regis, the hymn sung while processing to the Altar of Repose during the Good Friday Liturgy before the reforms of Pope Pius XII.

O Crux ave, spes unica,
Hoc passionis tempore
Auge piis justitiam,
Reisque dona veniam.

Te, summa Deus Trinitas,
Collaudet omnis spiritus:
Quos per crucis mysterium
Salvas, rege per saecula. Amen.

O Cross! all hail! sole hope, abide
With us now in this Passion-tide:
New grace in pious hearts implant,
And pardon to the guilty grant.

Thee, mighty Trinity! One God!
Let every living creature laud;
Whom by the Cross Thou dost deliver,
O guide and govern now and ever! Amen.

Reflection written by Evan Gallagher