Holy Week Retreat-in-Pl ace 2020
The Joy of Full Surrender by Fr. Simon Baker
The Death of God on Good Friday is at once the most heinous act ever committed and the most splendid event in the history of the universe. To properly understand Calvary one must, with a contemplative gaze, look at Christ’s suffering, shame, abandonment, persecution, and death while at the same time looking through this event towards its culmination in the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. We cannot skip the unpleasant parts in favor of the glorious ones, nor can we get stuck on Calvary forgetting that the cross is not the final chapter. This was Jesus Christ’s own method, who for “the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame,” (Heb 12: 2). The joy to come gave Jesus the endurance needed to embrace his cross. Also noted in the above quoted Letter to the Hebrews is the acknowledgment that Jesus despised the shame of the cross. Notice the author does not say he despised its guilt. A distinction must be made here. Guilt is traditionally understood in the phrase “I did something bad,” whereas shame sounds more like, “I am something bad.” Guilt is associated with one’s actions and behaviors. Shame touches to the core of one’s identity. To be sure, both guilt and shame are very real experiences in the event of the cross, but only one is to be despised. Even though the emotion of guilt generally carries a bad reputation (think of the derisive phrase “Catholic guilt” to indicate how the “oppressive” Catholic Church makes people feel bad for doing what they like) guilt
We must wait in the lonely silence of Good Friday with our eyes fixed on the Cross. In Eden, a tree brought about our condemnation. On Good Friday another tree – the Cross, the Tree of Life – brings about our redemption. “Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world.”
- Abbot James Albers Good Friday Homily
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Kansas Monks
is actually a healthy person’s response to bad behavior. The complete absence of guilt in a person’s life either means they are as innocent as the Blessed Virgin Mary or, in the words of well-known author and speaker Brené Brown, borderline psychopathic. When we look with faith at our Savior hanging from the cross we should know that our sins hung him there, and this knowledge is what leads us to repentance. The work of the Holy Spirit is to “convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation” (Jn 16:8); the sins for which we should feel guilty, the righteousness that comes from belief in Jesus, and the condemnation that comes to those who refuse to repent.
For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin.
Truly, “the Lord laid upon - Second him the guilt of us all” Corinthians 5:21 (Is 53:6). But he also laid upon him the shame of us all. In the Garden of Eden we meet our first parents, newly created by God, untouched by sin and evil, “naked and without shame” (Gn 2:25). However, once sin entered the world shame entered as well, both for Adam and Eve and all humanity descending from them. The experience of shame distorts reality and can easily trick its prey into thinking of themselves as too broken, too far gone, for even God to reach. Then we meet Jesus, the new Adam, on the hill of Calvary naked and without shame. In this vision we awaken to the knowledge that even our greatest shame was taken up by him so that absolutely nothing may be out of his redemptive reach. On the cross, Jesus took up every one of our experiences of sin, of guilt, and of our shame. First, there is the awful shame of abandonment by those who are supposed to love us. “About three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). It is, of course, impossible that God the Father could have actually abandoned Jesus. However, the Son’s experience of his Father’s abandonment was a very real experience. Jesus had to go to the depths of such an experience of abandonment, because we experience such felt abandonment by God. When we cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” we need to have someone to look to in order to know that we are not alone in our suffering and that this experience is not the final word.
