Good Friday Homily: The Transforming Power of the Holy Cross
At the Last Supper, Jesus gave us what He called a new commandment when He said, “love one another as I have loved you.” And then on the next day, the first Good Friday, He showed us what loving like Him looks like. He chose to forgive those who were mocking Him and to extend mercy to the repentant thief next to Him even in the midst of physical and mental agony. Christ gave a new kind of purpose to the experience of human suffering by transforming the Cross into an opportunity to bestow life-saving grace and forgiveness to others.
And He enables us to do the same when suffering enters our lives. Because of our relationship with Jesus we can become partners in the Passion, so to speak, so that our struggles and pains and frustrations become a sharing in His Cross. All we have to do is to unite ourselves in spirit with Christ crucified and make the choice to love and to forgive and to think of others no matter what we may be going through. Down through the centuries ever since that first Good Friday there have been many devout Christians who have embraced this transformational way of the Cross and given purpose to their otherwise meaningless suffering.
St. Mark Ji was one of these outstanding partners of the Passion. His is a marvelous example of embracing the cross of suffering as an opportunity for loving as Jesus loves. He was a Chinese physician and a very active member of his parish. He was married with children and was known for his kindness and generosity in treating patients. However, easy access to medical drugs was the beginning of his own personal way of the Cross. He gradually went from using opiates as medication into becoming a full-blown addict. And as his addiction spiraled downward his fellow parishioners shunned him until the once popular doctor became a social outcast in his own village. And because Mark kept giving into his addiction his pastor refused to hear his confessions and began denying him Holy Communion. Finally, he was even refused admittance into the parish church itself. And so for 3o years Mark remained an struggling addict exiled from both church and sacraments. But fortunately, not exiled from Jesus Christ.
You see, the pastor and villagers of course knew nothing about the dynamics of addiction as we do today. They either didn’t know or didn’t understand that the Church teaches that the compulsion of addiction takes away the freedom of choice needed for someone to be personally guilty of mortal sin. And so they saw Mark’s on-going addiction as a simple matter of choice and falsely judged him to be an obstinate and unrepentant sinner. Fortunately, God sees into the heart and knows the real truth about our struggles.
Amazingly, despite how his pastor and parish treated him, Mark did not hold this against them nor isolate himself from them. Every Sunday he could be found outside the church, humbly kneeling at its door, begging for prayers as the people arrived for Mass. And he would remain there, joining in their worship from afar. This went on without fail, Sunday after Sunday, for 30 years. Inspired by the example of Jesus during His Passion, Mark forgave those who ignored him and stepped around him as they entered the parish church. He harbored no hatred.
In the midst of all he was going through, Mark did his best to maintain his relationship with Christ in whatever ways he could. He knew that his faith and love for Christ was genuine, even if his addiction hid this fact from the others. He had moments, even stretches at a time, of recovery but these were quickly followed by relapse. He just couldn't seem to beat the cycle of addiction. But he never stopped trying. Through it all, he kept consciously uniting his pain, his struggles, his public humiliation and even his falls from sobriety to the Passion of Christ, for he knew that Jesus accepts all that is offered with sincerity of heart. He simply kept trusting in God, clinging to the hope that someday, somehow, he would be set free by the power of the Holy Cross.
Well, that day of freedom finally arrived but in a way he could have never imagined. The Chinese government had begun a fierce persecution of Catholics and the parishioners of Mark's village were all summoned to the church, where they were arrested and condemned to death, But of course the outcast Mark was not among them. However, despite the danger he eventually made his way to the parish church and finally gained admittance to it after 30 years of exile. He approached the officer in charge of execution and declared, “I am one of them.”
And then amazingly, he asked for and received permission to die last of all. Why did he make this request? According to surviving witnesses, it was so that he could make sure that no one would die without him at their side, comforting and encouraging them. Even during those horrible final moments, Mark thought of loving others and reminded them that they were on their way to Heaven. He prayed with them and sang hymns to the Blessed Mother to uplift their hearts. No matter how he had been treated for half of his life, he did not want those he loved to face death alone and afraid.
Like his Lord Jesus on the cross, Mark offered himself up for the good of others and loved them to the very end.
Who would have ever thought that the parish outcast and village drug addict would turn out to be the most authentic reflection of Jesus Christ from among them all? Now that’s the transforming power of the Holy Cross! That’s the never-ending always-available grace of Good Friday that is possible for us all. So in a few minutes when we venerate the Holy Cross let our touching of it be a sign that we, too, want to unite our personal sufferings with those of the Lord and become partners in the Passion of Christ. Let’s embrace the power and grace of the Cross and allow it to transform us into Christians who strive to love as Jesus loves and by doing so make 0ourselves and whatever we have to deal with into something beautiful for God and for others.
No comments:
Post a Comment