Message of Good Friday
Published: Fri, 04/06/12
A Daily Spiritual Seed
- resources for prayer and spiritual growth
Message of the Day
"It
is finished." It is hard for us to know the intonation with which these
words of the dying Christ were spoken. If they came as the sufferer's
sigh of relief, they must also have been the worker's glad cry of
achievement. Everything had been done that could be. The human race had been
offered a sight of God as He really was. For those of us who believe
that in seeing Jesus we see God, the Cross is not a coarse framework of
blood-stained wood, but the most precious emblem of our dearest
hopes. ... It is the great pledge which we sorely need, that love is
stronger than hate, grace than sin, life than death.
- H. R. L. Sheppard (1880-1937), Two Days Before- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Lectionary Readings of the Day
http://www.usccb.org/calendar/index.cfm?showLit=1&action=month
Is 52:13-53:12; Ps 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25; Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9; Jn 18:1-19:42
R. (Lk 23:46) Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
In you, O LORD, I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame.
In your justice rescue me.
Into your hands I commend my spirit;
you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.
For all my foes I am an object of reproach,
a laughingstock to my neighbors, and a dread to my friends;
they who see me abroad flee from me.
I am forgotten like the unremembered dead;
I am like a dish that is broken.
But my trust is in you, O LORD;
I say, "You are my God.
In your hands is my destiny; rescue me
from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors."
Let your face shine upon your servant;
save me in your kindness.
Take courage and be stouthearted,
all you who hope in the LORD.
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Reflection on the Scriptures
- http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him . . .
"Learned obedience" and "was made perfect" can sounds strange to our ears. Was Jesus not already perfect as he was? And what did he have to learn? Yet it was part of being human that he did indeed learn. He learned his mother-tongue from his mother and craftsmanship from his father; and he learned what human suffering feels like from being a suffering human being. In what sense was he "made perfect"? He became the perfect mediator between humanity and the divine not only being divine and human in the abstract but learning what it is to be human from the inside, in suffering solidarity. That is what made him perfect in the role of high priest. That is why the author ends our passage with the strange phrase declared by God high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Jesus is such a perfect go-between between us and the Father that the author has to reach for the image of a different kind of high priest in order to express his thought. So he says that he is "high priest according to the order of Melchizedek." Melchizedek was the mysterious figure in Genesis 14 who blessed Abram in the name of the creator long before there was a Hebrew temple and any temple priests at all.
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
- by Dennis Hamm, S.J.
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Spiritual Reading
On Cleaving to God
by St. Albert the Great
Take as a pattern of this the example of those climbing an ordinary mountain. If our mind is involved by its desires in the things which are going on below, it is immediately carried away by endless distractions and side tracks, and being to some extent divided against itself, is weakened and as it were scattered amongst the things which it seeks with its desires. The result is ceaseless movement, travel without an arrival, and labour without rest. If on the other hand our heart and mind can withdraw itself by its desire and love from the infinite distraction below of the things beneath it, can learn to be with itself, abandoning these lower things and gathering itself within itself into the one unchanging and satisfying good, and can hold to it inseparably with its will, it is correspondingly more and more gathered together in one and strengthened, as it is raised up by knowledge and desire. In this way it will become accustomed to the true supreme good within itself until it will be made completely immovable and arrive securely at that true life which is the Lord God himself, so that it can now rest in him within and in peace without any changeability or vicissitude of time, perfectly gathered within itself in the secret divine abode in Christ Jesus who is the way for those who come to him, the truth and life.
- Chapter 7. How the heart should be gathered within itself.
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