Come, let us worship Christ, the Son of God, who redeemed us by his blood. - Good Friday antiphon for the Invitatory Psalm
[Here are my reflections before the Lord in Eucharistic adoration this Good Friday. Square brackets are added at the time of posting]:
Come. Let us sing to the Lord and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us. Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving, and sing joyful songs to the Lord." Ps 95, first stanza.
The Rock through whom God delivered us through the Red Sea is the Rock through whom he gave us water in the desert is the Rock of our salvation from sin and death, is now in the Garden [Gethsemani, but also Eden], in agony. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies, (Rom 8, 22-23) the redemption won for us, but it must groan all the more for what we are doing to the One who created us, the Rock of our redemption. How dare we presume to put him to death?
[I know, it isn't quite like that for us, exactly (see stanza 2 reflection). Still, it is good in moments of temptation to remember the connection between our choice and his suffering under the weight of our sin.]
The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great King over all the gods. He holds in his hand the depths of the earth, and the highest mountains as well. He made the sea, it belongs to him; the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hand." Ps 95, second stanza.
What love the Creator has for us, in submitting to our judgment.
It is the judgment we deserve or, at least, the one we have chosen rather than choosing to be the sons and daughters which God has created us to be. God alone knows enough to judge properly - at least about what really matters: the condition of my/our heart and soul - yet chooses instead to take our judgment upon himself, be it our judgment of ourselves, our judgment of one another, or our presumptuous judgment of him. [When we choose sin we choose our own eternal death over the abundant eternal life that our loving God desires for us. But Christ loves us too much to let this decision which we make in our ignorance stand unchallenged, and so chooses to be put to death for our sake.] He is the One who created everything from nothing. He didn't merely rearrange what was already there, as we do in grabbing materials to build a wondrous, towering, glorious edifice, or a combination of sound frequencies and amplitudes that have never been put together in precisely that way before, or a neural connection that results in a thought over which others might ponder or wonder (ponder or wander?). Yet he who alone can create something out of nothing is in the Garden, in agony over how he is to be reduced to the nothing of our contemptuous judgment of him. [If we trust in God, we know that we are not reduced to nothing by our death; still, we routinely make others, and most especially God himself, as nothing to us. No one is as nothing to Christ, and these hours demonstrate it as nothing else ever has.]
Come, then, let us bow down and worship, bending the knee before the Lord, our maker, for he is our God and we are his people, the flock he shepherds. Ps 95, third stanza.
The angels come to be with you, Lord, to comfort and encourage. I, who am about to judge you, Lord, who has judged you so often, dare to approach you here, as well. Full of sorrow for how I have dared and will dare to judge you, is there any comfort at all that I can bring to you for what my sin is bringing you to? If I cannot bring succor to you, Lord, please at least let me worship you and marvel at the depth of your love and your submission.
Our desire to comfort you is like an abusive parent trying to comfort their child by being tender toward him after hurting him terribly. The child's trauma remains, Lord, just as we are told that the marks of our judgment remain upon the Lamb of God for all eternity. It is how we recognize you [and our place in you. I can't find the scripture reference to this. I'll add it later if I run across it, but the idea is that, like Thomas, we will recognize Jesus in heaven by his scars].
Today, listen to the voice of the Lord. Do not grow stubborn as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meribah and Massah they challenged and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works. Ps 95, fourth stanza
[I have written so often about this psalm, and alluded to these in my notes from this morning, yet can't seem to find the place where I observed the insights that are gained when we reflect on the two ways the first verse of this stanza are interpreted: as above, and "If today you hear his voice . . . " They both provide important points of view for our approaching and responding to God's presence.]
The Rule of St. Benedict begins with the words Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts. I've also reflected on a couple occasions about the significance of this psalm verse in calling us to reflect on Christ's words from the cross, three of which we will hear in today's Passion reading. And over these last three Lenten years I have written at exhaustive length as inspired by Fr. Neuhaus' book, Death on a Friday Afternoon. It is valuable for us to listen to what you say, Lord, and reflect on what each word means for us. We have stubbornly judged you, concluding that your will and your evaluation are less applicable than our own to our lives. We will doubtless do so again, determinedly hardening our hearts, trusting ourselves and our judgment rather than yours, trying to remake you and your will and your word according to our own image of you rather than allowing you to remake us in yours. No matter how much we witness the works born in the extremity of your love, we challenge and provoke you.
Forty years I endured that generation. I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not know my ways." So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest." Ps 95, fifth stanza
We cannot enter into our rest in you while we cling to our right to judge in your stead. Do we not see how our judgment leads to agony rather than rest? The writer of the letter to the Hebrews writes (Heb 4) about our entering into the Lord's sabbath rest. This is the archetype of the eternal "rest" in which we praise and worship you for all eternity!
Pange Lingua Gloriosi!
Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory!
Of his flesh the mystery sing,
and the blood, all price exceeding,
shed by our immortal King! - St. Thomas Aquinas
[I won't quote all of this wonderful ancient hymn. But it has a special meaning on this holy night as I reflect on what the Lord is and will be experiencing for my sake.] Oh, I won't be able to convey all the thoughts which have flooded me in praying this hymn in this eternal moment!
The Eucharist demonstrates for us how every created thing in nature is transformed in you [including ourselves if we allow it]. It is more than a mere archetype, for this mere matter has actually become you, Lord. [Perhaps, in the end, this will be true for all of your creation?] Yet every thing, all of creation, bears you, by your grace and action. Yet you are uniquely present in these elements Lord, which bear your body and blood, soul and divinity, to and for us.
Why this tumult among the nations, among peoples this useless murmuring?
They arise, the kings of the earth; princes plot against the Lord and his Anointed . . .
Now, oh kings, understand. Take warning, rulers of the earth; serve the Lord . . ." Ps 2
As we cast our judgment upon God, are these verses not speaking of us? Though we may feel powerless, how often is that not in response to a course which we ourselves have put into action [as king and ruler over our own life] when we choose what we deem best for ourselves and our loved ones: a career, a hobby, an addiction, a way of life?
Let me instead do you homage, here now in the Garden and later beneath your cross, Lord, so that I might also do so in your glorious presence for all eternity!
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Ps 22
We often feel forsaken. I've heard it suggested that Jesus may have prayed this entire Psalm from the cross, and the gospel writer used shorthand to convey it to his audience. [Alternately, Jesus may have been invoking the entire Psalm to his hearers, lacking the energy to pray it aloud entire.]
Whatever our emotional state - joy, despair, excitement, abandonment, sadness, longing - we can find its counterpart in the Psalms, and know that we are praying these emotions using the very words which Jesus prayed, too.
The Hebrews reading from today's Office of Readings (also the source for the Psalms on which I've reflected thus far) is especially powerful to spend some time in on Good Friday! [I didn't record any specific reflections on it this year, but relished it nonetheless. But I wanted to spend some time with Fr. Neuhaus before the Lord in this special time.]
At the entrance of the chapel of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in the Bronx are the words, "I THIRST, I QUENCH." These are the same words at the entrance of the community's chapels all over the world . . . In Rome I said Mass for the Missionaries of Charity in their plain little chapel just outside St. Peter's Square. Six sisters, including two from India, one from Indonesia and a formidable Valkyrie, perhaps from Sweden, operate a soup kitchen and refuge for the street people of Rome. The intesity of the sisters' devotion and the simplicity of their lives embarrassed me. How complex and cluttered with plans and projects is my life compared to theirs. Then it came to me: Their austere attentiveness was a thirsting for the water of life. It was an ecstatic thirsting. In the communion their thirst was quenched and, at the same time, intensified." Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon
[Fr. Neuhaus is writing on the fifth word, I thirst. Many (including me) have written on this word extensively, about how Jesus' physical thirst is a sign of the thirst which led the eternal Son to become incarnate knowing we would judge and condemn him. His thirst for his beloved prodigal sons and daughters is greater.
After reading the passage above, I seemed to sense the following message:]
Enter into my thirst, and allow me to slake it.
You hunger and thirst already, not realizing what you truly need to have your longing satisfied.
I am all you need. Every other longing of your heart and your life - beyond your physical needs for food and shelter, which I supply - is really your longing for me, which you so often misattribute and misinterpret. You turn to that which can never satisfy your thirst when I am waiting with a fountain of my love and my presence [for they are inseparable]. It is no mere sip of wine on a sponge that I offer you, but a river of grace that leads to an ocean of love. Yet it is true that when you allow me to quench your thirst, you will find yourself sharing instead in my thirst for my people whom I love. I long for you, my dear one, and you will know when my thirst for you is quenched, because you will thirst for your brothers and sisters. This wholesome thirst would drain you, were I not its source and its fulfillment.
I am thirsty. I know that you thirst, as well. Enter in, and discover my true thirst, and find its quenching in me.
[I then continued reading, to encounter this paragraph in the next half page, as if in verification:]
From the cross, "I thirst." And those who kneel at his cross share his thirst, which is both a thirst for him and for all for whom he thirsts. - ibid.
[The final quotes I jotted down prior to leaving the chapel this morning are too disjointed to quite work as posting. Fr. Neuhaus refers to this event by and in which the world is refounded, and quotes a half dozen scripture passages in which it is clear that these events now fulfilled were planned "from the foundation of the world." To understand this properly we must enter into the mindset of eternity again, not "time without end" but the absence of time, in which our thoughts and actions are not "foreseen" so that we have no choice in them, but seen as we will choose them. It isn't that God had to respond to our fallen condition by sending a Savior who fulfilled all the conditions he had established through prophecy. It is rather that God has seen our need, has seen the choices we are making, and prepared for us the law and the prophets so that we would recognize this Deliverer because of them. This was his plan in response to us from eternity before there was such a thing as "before," and as it is fulfilled in Christ and in our embracing of Christ, is the plan for eternity when there is no longer any such thing as "after."
Lord, help me to enter more fully into the eternity you have prepared for me.]
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