GOOD FRIDAY HOMILY Theme: Ecce Agnus Dei…Ave Crucis Spes Nostra!
Of all the titles we have for Jesus, there’s one that I think is least understood by many of us even though we hear it and say it several times at every Mass. And today, it’s even written on the wood of the cross that we will venerate in a few minutes. You’ll see it just below the figure of Jesus and it says in Latin, “Ecce Agnus Dei”, which means, “Behold the Lamb of God.” So, why do we call Jesus the Lamb of God? What does it mean and what’s its connection with Good Friday?
Well, to answer these questions, we need to recall the religious rituals of the Hebrews. Animal sacrifices were central to their worship (and it was done, by the way, in a much more humane manner than our slaughterhouses do today). Their purpose was to seek forgiveness from God. The Jewish priests would symbolically transfer a person’s sins to the animal as a kind of a proxy or a substitute, and then its sacrifice was considered to be the death, so to speak, of the person’s sins. Get the idea? The most important of these ritual sacrifices were those of the Passover lambs in the Temple of Jerusalem.
Of course, these sacrifices were insufficient for the purpose. And they gave rise to the false idea that humans can obtain forgiveness from God by saying the right words and performing certain actions. This attitude is why the Pharisees, for example, cling so tenaciously to the exact observance of the Torah, the Law. But to set us straight, Jesus taught us that the forgiveness of sins is not something that we can buy or earn or achieve by our own power. Rather, it's a totally free gift that God offers us for no other reason than love. And Jesus didn't just talk about it, he showed us what this sin-forgiving love looks like in action. He took upon himself the totality of our sins, freely, intentionally and deliberately out of love for us and for our salvation.
After the Resurrection, the disciples reflected on the death of Jesus and that it took place on the very same day and at the very same time that the lambs were being sacrificed in the temple. They saw a definite relationship between the two, especially as they recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah that we heard in our first reading that said, “It was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured…he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins…and the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all…like a lamb he was led to the slaughter.” So they made the connection between Jesus’ sacrifice and that of the Jewish rituals. They knew that it was much more than a coincidence that he died on the very same day and at the very same time that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple. Putting all these things together, they began to refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
But there was a real and unique difference between the old rituals and the new sacrifice. In the old sacrifice sinful men were making a sin-offering to God. But in the new it was now God himself, who had become the sinless Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who made the sin-offering. And there’s a couple of pretty awesome things about that. First, being God who sees and knows all things meant that Jesus’ sacrifice covered all of humanity’s sins - past, present, and future, including yours and mine personally. And second, since he was not just human but also divine the love with which he offered himself was infinite love, totally pure love, utterly unselfish love, in short it was perfect love. And the power of this perfect love far outweighed that of our offenses, making his sacrifice on the cross the perfect apology for sin on behalf of the entire human race in general, and of each and every one of us individually.
But here’s the thing: even though Jesus did his part to save us, its effects are not automatically applied to us. In other words, we have to want to be saved. We have to do our part to claim it because God never forces his gifts upon us, not even the awesome gift of his total forgiveness. He respects our freedom and so waits for each one of us to ask for it, to acknowledge our wrong-doings and receive forgiveness in return. This gift of immense mercy was made possible for us through the Holy Cross which was the instrument of our salvation. And so this is why we have the ritual of honoring it today. This is also why you’ll see on our cross today another Latin inscription written on its horizontal bar that says, “Ave Crucis, Spes Nostra” which means, “Hail to the Cross our Hope.”
So, in a few minutes when we come forward to venerate the Holy Cross, let’s praise and thank the Lamb of God for sacrificing himself upon it for our sins. And let’s make our veneration of the Holy Cross an expression of repentance which opens up our hearts to be cleansed by the blood of that Lamb. In this way we can spiritually prepare ourselves to celebrate a joyous Easter, rejoicing in the fact that our sins, which were crucified with him on the cross and then buried with him in the tomb, remained behind when he rose from the grave…which means that they are dead and gone forever.
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