The "Goodness" of Good Friday

Crucifixion (1565), Tintoretto

Have you ever wondered why we call today “Good Friday”? It seems like an odd name, doesn’t it? People have suggested various explanations as to the reason. Some say it is a corruption of the original name of “God’s Friday.” Others say it’s because the word “good” used to mean something akin to “holy” or “sacred”. Because it is the day of Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross, the way by which you and I are reconciled to God, we can call it “good.”

But even while we recognize the importance of today, it’s hard to really think of it as something that is truly good – something that that we should rejoice in. We’ve just finished the reading of the Passion according to St. John – an account of an innocent man being betrayed, wrongly accused, unjustly sentenced and brutally executed. At face-value, this appears to be the very defeat of goodness.

And yet, as people of faith, we believe there is something good happening here. Even amid the cruelty of Jesus’s passion and death, there is a reason to rejoice, because the divine plan is at work. Today happens to be the 25^th of March, that is, exactly nine months away from Christmas. Normally, today the Church would be celebrating the Solemnity of the Annunciation, remembering when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce the Incarnation of Jesus. So while March 25^th usually affords us the opportunity to remember the occasion when God indicated he would soon fulfill the promise of Israel’s Messiah by sending his own Son to free us from sin and death, today we recall the very passion by which he has done so.

Interestingly, the parallels between Good Friday and the Annunciation go much deeper than that. Early Christians were interested in the chronology of Jesus’s death and calculated that its date, the 14^th of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, corresponded to March 25^th in the Roman calendar. In other words, according to tradition, the Incarnation of Jesus and the death of Jesus occurred on the same day. Going even farther back, this same day held great importance in the Jewish faith since it was believed to be the date on which Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac and, even farther back, the day that God finished the work of creation.

So what we recall today really is remarkable. And we do more than recall. We celebrate, we rejoice that what Christ accomplishes on the cross is the fulfillment of the “good work” of God – his work of creation, his work of redemption. The Christ who dies on the cross is the same Christ by whom the world was made, in whose image and likeness mankind was created, through whom the ancient fathers and prophets formed a covenant with God, the same Christ who became man at Mary’s “Yes”. It is the “Yes” of Christ to the Father’s will, through his passion and death, that we have been restored to harmony with God and given a share in his eternal victory.

My friends, as we contemplate the mystery of the cross, today and every day, every time we look at a crucifix – we acknowledge its terrible reality, the suffering that Jesus endured on account of our sins. But we also must look beyond it and see it as the reason for all of our joy and hope. The timeless love that God has for humanity, a love that through all history and creation has sought to redeem us, finds its perfect expression and fulfillment here, in the Cross of Christ. “Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world. Come, let us adore.”