[Salvation]

Good Friday -- The Cross

Good Friday – The Cross

by Fr. Robert Barron

 The cross was meant to terrify people. If you ran afoul of the Roman state, they would fix you to this terrible instrument of torture, allow you to hang there until you died, and then leave your body for the beasts of the field. It was meant to be agonizingly painful, humiliating, and dehumanizing.

The cross came to symbolize all of the dark power that the world could muster: violence, oppression, injustice, and indifference to suffering. It was, in a word, state-sponsored terrorism and it was the key to the power of Rome. So terrible was the cross that people in polite society wouldn’t speak of it. For the first nine centuries of the Church’s life, Jesus’ cross wouldn’t be depicted.

It is so important theologically to note that Jesus allows all of this to wash over him. He submits to the totality of it, accepting as Paul says, “even death, death on a cross.” The world had thrown its worst at Jesus, spending itself on him, but he, through the power of the Holy Spirit, was more powerful. And this is why they proclaimed him as King and Lord and Messiah.

In an absolutely delicious bit of irony, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, places over the cross, the declaration, in the three major languages of the time, that Jesus is the King, effectively de-throning Caesar and becoming, despite himself, the first great evangelist.

And so we today hold up the cross of Jesus Christ, which was meant to affirm the powers of the world, the powers of sin and death, as a challenge to those powers.

It’s our declaration that death and violence do not have the last word. Jesus does.

[Salvation]

Catholic Spiritual Direction.com

To the Feet of the Crucified One

April 3, 2015 by Liz Estler  

To the Feet of the Crucified One
(This is the translation of the original Spanish version, which follows below)

White roses I’ve brought
to the feet of the Savior,
to those feet that have walked
the road of pain He trod.

Drops of blood have fallen
and trickle flower to flower.
The roses have been converted
into a bouquet of love [a bower]!

Red, very bright red
and of a piercing scent;
the flowers have not understood
the color change they underwent.

It’s three o’clock on a long-ago Friday,
and in the Body of the Lord,
the wounds have reopened,
and the sweat has been restored.

It’s that my God has wanted
to instruct the sinner
that for love He has come:
Jesus Christ, Redeemer.
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poetry by Ailut
Good Friday, April 3, 1953
(Good Friday falls on April 3rd this year, the first time since this poem was written)
Translation of “A Los Pies del Crucificado” poetry by Ailut: copyright 2015,
Elizabeth Estler, all rights reserved, used with permission.