A Homily on the Passion

Holy Week and the Triduum approach us, and I am dreading another bizarre dramatization of the arrest, trial and crufixion of Jesus. The Liturgy of the Word is certainly lengthy, and perhaps the participation of all (the Faithful get to read the part of  the 'Crowd') is something of an antidote for the apparently soporific duration. This kind of thing used to be trendy, and designed to show the artistry of the evangelist, as in, for example, the Collegeville Bible Commentary on the 4th Gospel. Of course, the evangelists had access to the genre of drama, and the option of writing one was always there.

Often, because of the undue burden placed on all by the sheer mass of the Gospel readings, a homily is abbreviated or omitted. I present this homily for Lenten reflection and as a contingency plan.

The narrative of events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus is a human story about a human person. No one seriously questions the historicity of the general contour of the story of a man betrayed by a friend, falsely accused, tried by his peers and delivered to a foreign power for judgement and execution at the hands of the state. It is also a personal story about a particular man. He had a mission and was joined in it by close associates. His initial success captured the popular imagination which led to general admiration for him in certain circles, even though his success was a threat to others.

The final events of his life were concentrated into hours. He passed from fame to ignominy in a flash, abandoned not just by the general populace but by his closest associates as well. He was personally betrayed by someone who might have even been especially close.

In the flow of fleeting time he is disavowed by everyone. He is completely abandoned, a no-body totally subsumed into the unspeakable and ineffable power of the state. He is publicly mocked, marched through the streets to the jeers of the mob, and finally nailed to a cross, humiliated, defeated, separated from everything, and awaits an exquisitely painful dying.

We must imagine ourselves there: we witness to the event through the witness of the Gospel. We are at the foot of the cross, watching, hearing the anguish and abandonment of someone waiting for death to come.

Now imagine he is your son, brother, husband, friend. Imagine he is anyone's child, sibling, spouse, friend.

Here is your son, in the power of the state, on a gurney about to receive a lethal injection. You are there, separated from him perhaps by a pane of glass; you are there as a witness to the death of your son. Is he innocent? Is he guilty? At this point, what is the difference?

Do you rush to the glass, pound on it, try to break through it to embrace your son, hold him close, prevent it from happening?

You are restrained as you struggle against this impossible moment. Do you scream a scream so screaming the scream itself is impossible?

The injection is given and you see your son's body convulse, tortured in the throes of death. What are you thinking? Saying? Feeling? Does the word 'justice' come to mind?

You see your son's body finally relax. He is dead. What sounds do you make now? Where were you when he suffered death? Where were you in his moment of passing into that death? Does the word 'God' come to mind?

Now imagine God the son and God the father, on Calvary, in the moment. What is it like for God, united to his son, but unable to change the outcome? What kind of sound does God make when he is screaming against the suffering of the son? What kind of terror overcomes the son to witness God the father who cannot break through to the moment?

This is the Cross.

The Cross of Christ's death bears witness to us everyday, and we bear witness to the Cross when we hear its call.

Every celebration of  the Mass is a confrontation with the Cross, but especially on the Sunday of Holy Week, when we get to safely drown it all out with really bad acting.

Robert Barron reminds us, and rightly so, that we call the Friday of Christ's death on a cross, 'good.' It is 'good' not because of the horror beyond words acted out this day, but because of our deepest hope that the resounding scream of God overwhelms the howls of execration at the Crucifixion and the powers of the world.

The scream of God does not shatter glass, collapse mountains or hurl the planets into the sun; it is a scream that whispers on Elijah's breeze, barely perceptible perhaps, but beckons insistently, insisting to be received. It is a call without words that asks to exist; the sound that a Sunday morning makes; the sound made that inexplicable first day of the week so many years ago. The sound of the past made present.