This Sermon is prepared by
Rev.Fr.Peter Jayakanthan sss
Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament
Corpus Christi Catholic Church,
Houston, Texas, US
Good Friday-The Holy WeekLove is bearing…..The poet gets a song on the love of God from the cross……A carpenter sees two huge pieces of wood on the cross…… The business man views the cross as a ransom, a redemption price…. The lawyers and judges prefer the message of the cross as an expression for human sin…. Converted Jews prefer to compare the cross to the sacrifices of the Old Testament….. For the martyrs and saints, the cross of Christ gives meaning to our pains and suffering….. The message of Good Friday is bearing is love…..love is bearing all things. I cannot handle it or I do not want to handle it. Which is true in times of stress? My God was the final cry in different languages and extreme screaming in loud voice was the final video revelation of the airbus320 which killed 150 people including 16 school students. Andreas Lubitz the co-pilot took charge and caused this fatal event intentionally. 27year old expert pilot decided to choose destructive path said to her girlfriend “one day the world would know me”. He was in stress, went through depression and under treatment for mental status because he was losing eyesight, fear of losing license to fly and relationship problem. No love, lack of acceptance, fear of losing vision and pain of losing license and broken dream of flying forever. He did not want bear and there was no one to bear with him such situation. He chose the destructive path by failing to love himself. Andreas did not want to handle and face it. I cannot handle my marriage anymore……I cannot handle my sickness any more …..It is hard to handle retirement…….it is hard to handle my new job. I do not know how to handle my stress. In short we do not wish to be a bearing and carrying person of love and community. It is love, yes bearing is love, and love is bearing. Love is not a mere emotion or feeling, love is not a desire love is a decision to bear. I will bear baby come what may, is the expression of Many mothers, I will be with my loving parent, spouse or children in their illness, I am glad to bear their suffering and struggle. When we do not want to bear we become sick and weak in our spiritual and emotional journey. We become destructive with bitterness and hatred against God, with other and finally with myself. What is bearing? Bearing is facing, carrying, withstanding and being with. Bearing is shouldering by being solidarity with the person. It brings comfort, peace and hope to the person. Jesus bore the cross and cross bore Jesus. Yes cross carried the criminals and slaves; cross carried the humiliation and insults. Jesus love bears all things. When Jesus embraced the cross, He bore and carried all humiliation and insults. He bore the plan of the father 30 years with the parents; He bore the questions and blame of scribes and Pharisees. He bore the betrayal, denial and no understanding of His beloved disciples. He bore extreme pain for three hours, thus bore the sins of humanity to offer salvation. He bore the title son of God, messiah, son of carpenter, glutton, friends of tax collector and sinners. What made Him to bear, nothing else other than love. Love is bearing, bearing is love. Moltman speaks out that Jesus’ passion and death on the cross is the origin and center of Christian theology. He engaged, involved and participated in our human reality. Another theologian reflects that, ‘this is Jesus’s empathetic solidarity with humanity, who opts to be on our side. God, who is capable of suffering, should be capable of love too.’The image of the cross reflects so many, countless crosses of violence, struggles of the concentration camp, humiliations at Auschwitz, and the victims of struggles throughout the world in particular among Christians in Iraq and Syria now. As St. Paul teaches so clearly in Romans 6, taking up the cross in our lives can only happen if we daily reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. The Good News is that Jesus has saved us through his cross and gives us the means to be fixed with him to his cross in our death to sin and to rise with him to the life of grace leading to eternal bliss with God. Crucifixion was used early in history by the Phoenicians, then the Greeks and the Romans as a feared way of subduing conquered territories. Brutal and barbaric, the cross was a tool of political power for the Romans. The cross was the crudest instrument of torture used by the Romans to punish rebels and criminals, and the slow death by hanging on the cross was the most excruciating experience of pain in the world. They maintained their power because of people’s fear of death on the cross. When one was condemned by the state, the condemned literally had to "take up his cross" and carry it to the public place where he was to be crucified. Jesus knew beforehand every detail of his coming cruel suffering, humiliation, rejection and death, but he welcomed it all wholeheartedly according to the eternal plan of God his Father. The challenge from the cross for us is to accept our unavoidable share of pain and suffering in this life, deriving strength and inspiration from the suffering of Christ and to offer it for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of the world. Jesus proved that voluntary acceptance of suffering has salvific value. It was in fact a condition for his disciples: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16: 24, Mark 8: 34, Luke 9: 23). Mark10:45 “to give His life as a ransom for many” 1Cor6:20 “for you have been purchased at a price” Acts20:28 “we were purchased with the precious blood of Christ”, all these explain the bearing and participating Jesus with the humanity by embracing cross. Today’s first reading Isa53:4-6 “yet it was our Infirmities that He bore our sufferings that He endured ….to make us whole” Are we ready to prove that love is bearing all things, all struggle and affliction. In Greek philosophical thinking, God is the ultimate reality, which means he is totally above and excluded from the world, from the divided, multiplied and diverse reality of humanity. He is divine. In classical metaphysics, God is incapable of suffering and moving, because God is self-sufficient, immovable and unchangeable. In modern metaphysics, however, God is absolute, and there is no place for suffering-the absolute God cannot be subject to the sufferings of the world. This modern approach paints God as a far-away, unreachable, untouchable reality-the deity stands in front of humanity, uninvolved. However, traditional Christian understanding proclaims Jesus died for the redemption of the world. Here, the Eucharist communicates the self-surrendering and sacrifice of Christ in the body and blood of Jesus. God is revealed in word and sacrament, so we turn to scripture to know the passion of a passionate God. Scripture reveals the passion, compassion and involvement of God for His people, the life we see in Israel. This contradicts the Greek understanding of an apathetic deity. Even going beyond the scripture, Christian understandings have patristic and devotional observances in practice. Crucified Jesus is God. So, salvation is deification of the human being, sharing salvation and eternal life of the divine. This too speaks partial understanding of suffering and crucified God. If God is capable of suffering, than the death of Jesus is a tragedy. The God who cannot suffer cannot bring redemption from suffering. (Moltmann, pgs. 269-271 This is passion of suffering or passion of love. God, who is capable of suffering, should be capable of love too. The New Testament states that God is love and that the abundance of love should enable God to participate in our suffering. So, God can suffer, will suffer and is suffering in, with and for us. Christ died for our salvation. That salvation is connected with sin, just as suffering is connected with innocent people. God allows Jesus to suffer so as to be present in the suffering of the ordinary, also known as Solidarity Christology. The image of the cross reflects so many, countless crosses of violence, struggles of the concentration camp, humiliations at Auschwitz, and the victims of struggles in Latin America. Moltmann refers to Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero and John Sobrino to confirm that only in our own suffering can God help us to see His disfigured face in the poor, suffering, unwanted and marginalized. When, I was in Mumbai, India in the 1990s, it was fashionable for the teenagers and young boys to wear a crucifix hanging around the neck. No one was an exception, with boys of all faiths, both studying and working, to have a cross around their neck. For his studies, a sociology student-priest interviewed the shoeshine boys available in all the Mumbai railway station. Two of the questions he shared with me are still fresh in my memory: “Why do you wear crucifix? Are you a Christian or Catholic?” The response from most of the shoeshine boys was, “I am neither Christian nor Catholic, nor do I even know which religion I believe or which God I worship, because we don’t have parents-we don’t have history. But we like this God, Jesus, because he suffered and struggled as we suffer and struggle every day. He teaches us constantly to bear, to carry and to face every trial. We see him in our struggle and we recognize our suffering in his struggle on the cross, we are strengthened, so we wear it.” Is this a response of consolation or comfort, Jesus is with me and participating in my suffering, so fundamental for us? He bore the sins and cry of the humanity. Edith Stein was a Jewish woman, who loved the cross and embraced its contradiction and mystery throughout her own life. There is a marvelous, life-size, bronze sculpture Edith Stein in the center of the German city of Cologne, close to the archdiocesan seminary. The sculpture depicts three Edith Steins at the three critical moments of her life. The first moment presents Edith as the young, Jewish philosopher and professor, a student of Edmund Husserl. Edith is presented deep in meditation and a Star of David leans against her knee. The second depiction of the young woman shows Edith split in two. The artist shows her face and head almost divided. She moved from Judaism to agnosticism and even atheism. Hers was a painful search for the truth. The third representation is Edith as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and she holds in her arms the crucified Christ: “Teresa blessed by the Cross” as her name indicates. She moved from Judaism, through atheism, to Christianity. She bore all the doubts, insults and rejection with cross. Can I bear, can I carry and can I face my pain, sickness, and stress and struggle because He is teaching us on the cross that bearing is true love and He is participating in me and with me-Amen. 
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