Wounded by the Cross: A Good Friday Homily

The following homily was preached by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP, at the Dominican House of Studies, on Good Friday, 2013:

In the city of Assisi, Italy, there is at the edge of town the great monument to the great saint of that place, the Basilica of San Francesco.  And against the lower wall of the basilica there is a museum, where tens of thousands of people pass each year, to learn about the saint. There, one can see a large glass display case, laid out horizontally, in which there is the original habit of St. Francis that he wore as a friar minor. And it is something striking to behold. It is in truth a kind grey bag or sack, originally one piece of fabric, sown in a very awkward way, with a hole at the top, where a person could put his head out. And it was clearly re-sown many times, so that it is held together only by a series of patches. It is rugged and torn and it can not be mistaken for anything else than what it is: the clothing of a homeless man. And it says one thing to the attentive onlooker: radicality. Francis was radical. The word has a Latin origin: radix: it means that which pertains to the root. This saint was affected to the root of his being, by the mystery we celebrate today, the mystery of the Cross. After his conversion, Francis lived in barns, with mud floors. He forced himself to care for lepers. He disdained honors, and fled the order that he founded twice, to avoid being made the superior. When he was tempted he threw his body onto thorn bushes or into cold lakes. When he preached, to make a fool of himself, he would sing in broken French, in public places. He caused Popes and Cardinals who heard him preach to cry with compunction. He ordered his own friars to lead him by a rope through public places, deriding him and putting ashes on his head, to humiliate himself. The last homily of his life was given to the nuns of his order. When they asked him somewhat spontaneously to preach, he recited Psalm 51, after which he sat on the ground and poured ashes on his own head. A sign of repentance. That was his final word to the world. What was going on with this man? Was he mentally unbalanced, as his own father thought, or was he passive aggressively seeking spiritual power, as some bishops at the time feared? Was he simply trying harder than the rest of us, a kind of Pelagian moral hero? No, it was none of these. Francis of Assisi was a weak person like the rest of us, but he was wounded by the Cross at the core of his being. What St. Francis discovered was that the love of Christ crucified was his only real riches, and he became fanatical to let nothing of his own weakness separate him from the pearl of great price. And so he made of himself a fool in the eyes of the world, to teach us all the wisdom of the Gospel. That the love of the sacred heart alone suffices, and that this love alone fulfills.

What then is the mystery of the Cross of Jesus? We might say that it has an exterior aspect and an interior one. The Cross is of course on some level utterly exterior. Lord was abandoned by disciples, betrayed by his friends, refused by his people, physically tortured and put to death by strangers. Why did God will all this or allow it? Because Jesus’ physical and emotional suffering are a sign: they are an outward sign of the seriousness of our sin, but also of the seriousness of God’s love. The wonderful and terrible seriousness of the love of God. Look what he endured for our sake. But the essence of the Cross is above all interior: It is the victory of love present in the sacred heart of Jesus. And this victory is definitive: over sin, death and the devil. This is given to us, by the gift of the Holy Spirit. His human and divine love is like a pillar of fire that leads the Church. It burns at the heart of the world. It illumines every human night and every obscurity, and is the source of our peace. There is no evil that cannot be forgiven by the power of the Cross. When the devil tries to tell us otherwise, he is a liar. How do we know that? For God at Golgotha, already took upon himself the worst thing that could happen: Human beings killed God, in his human body.  And God even there, respected the power of our human freedom. So that he could show that even in the worst hour of our human drama, He God in his merciful omnipotence could draw forth the greatest good. The worst thing that could happen did happen, and from it, God gleaned the redemption of the world. From death came glory. Once and forever. And that is not just some story, however beautiful. It is the deepest reality of our lives. And that is what St. Francis knew and that is why he dressed in rags, and acted like a fool. Because he had found it.

There is one above all, who found it before him, and who can help us to live it. It is she who stood by the Cross. In the passion narrative that we have recounted, She does not say anything. She stands. She does not wilt, or faint or flee. What did the Virgin Mary peer into at the Cross? What did she see, standing there? With her eyes of faith, she saw her Son, the Son of God, the person of the Word. The Virgin Mary at the Cross saw God crucified. And the Church teaches that in this hour, she understood in truth that the redemption of the world was transpiring, and that she consented to it in faith. The Cross is a place where Jesus went further than any of us could have expected him to go, out of love, but it also a place where he asked his Mother to go further than any of us could have expected her to go, in faith. And there in that act of faith, where she consented, so meritoriously, to his redemptive death, he said to her: woman behold your Son, and he said to us, the Church, child, behold your mother. Our life in this world is so much learning to let this mystery of the Cross disarm us. To let our own defenses down before the sacred heart of Jesus. To live, like Francis under the Cross, alongside the Virgin Mary, as men and women who have found the one thing necessary. That love of the sacred heart of Jesus wounded Francis physically, in a hermit’s cave in 1224, placing upon him the marks of Jesus. That same love today takes our poor wounds and binds them indissolubly, like a bride, to the wounds of the Lord: so that we have a place in this world always to rest, and to find our only true home. Let us reverence the Cross of Jesus and receive his body, crucified for us. We should surrender to him, without fear, in simplicity of heart, and the confidence of hope. Our weaknesses, our sins, and our fragilities: these are no obstacle. He bought them with a price. They belong to him, and he can receive them, and transform them. What he needs from us is our consent to the inner essence of his passion. Our consent to the sacred heart. The heart that has conquered the world on the Cross. The heart of a crucified king. Let us implore him, that we might find rest there, where alone we are truly free.