A Sermon for the Good Friday ecumenical liturgy (4-22-2011),
Offered by Nathan Ferrell at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Gloucester City, NJ
Texts: Luke 23:35-49 (focus is Luke 23:46)
SCRIPTURE READING
“Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.” So spoke our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ from his raised position on the cross, and then he breathed his last.
There is so much that can be said about the crucifixion of our Lord. Much has already been said; much more remains to be said. But at this moment, let us focus our thoughts upon these words of open trust and sure confidence which come from Christ at the very end of his earthly life. To give us a lens through which to better understand these words, let me bring before you the life of a saint, one who lived, and lives, in close relationship with Christ.
How many of you know the story of St. John of the Cross? The Vatican has declared this man to be a Doctor of the Church, one of the chosen few, primarily because of his incredible writings which describe the mystical life with remarkable insight. His most famous work is called The Dark Night of the Soul.
But do you know how he came to possess such insight into the life of intimate union with God? His story is a remarkable one, and it is worth of our attention on this day. St. John of the Cross was born at Hontoveros in Spain in 1542 into a life of poverty. When he was 21, he received the habit of the Carmelite order. It was not too long before St. John met St. Teresa of Avila. She inspired him to join in her vision of reforming the Carmelite Order back to its simple, original, life of prayer and discipline.
Soon, St. John of the Cross was one of the leaders of this growing reform movement. But this movement was seen as a threat by many of the existing monastic houses there in Spain, and so he was taken prisoner by a group of his brother monks. St. John was held in monastery prison in Toledo for nine months. He was locked in a solitary confinement cell that was 6 feet by 10 feet, with only one window high up in a wall near the ceiling. What is more, this saint was beaten three times a week, tortured even. All of this was in the hopes that he might renounce the reforms.
Now, can you imagine the pain that he must have felt? Not only the physical pain, though even that is impossible for me to fathom. I cannot imagine the pain of months of ongoing torture. But consider further the source of this pain! Imagine the deep psychological, mental and spiritual pains that he suffered. His own brothers – the Christian family to which he had devoted his entire life – these are the ones who betrayed him and tortured him, for their own goals motivated by greed and fear. Who could he trust? Who were his friends? Who was his family? Who would help him, defend him, liberate him from this pain? And what is more, where was God in all this? Why did God abandon him to this fate?
St. John of the Cross is well-named, because in a very real way, he experienced the true pain of the cross, the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. I say the true pain, because we must be honest and realize that the physical pain of crucifixion was not the terror that caused the Lord such sorrow and pain.
I know that may sound quite presumptuous to say, but we know that there have been countless others – both before and after Christ – who bravely and courageously faced their death, their martyrdom for the sake of God, without crying with agony and pain. Do we truly think that our Lord Jesus was not able to bravely face the cross without first shedding tears in the garden in the dark of night? If any man, woman or child has ever been strong, then this Man was stronger still! No one has ever had more strength of soul than Jesus! No one has had more resources for facing suffering and death than Christ!
No, it was not the physical pain which caused our Lord such suffering in his soul. It was the betrayal by his friend, the abandonment by his students, the feeling of total alone-ness. Never had our Lord Jesus known such loneliness. Throughout eternity as the Son of God, the Lord had known intimacy with the Father. “I and the Father are one”, he had said, and in this he had opened to us an amazing relationship of love and intimacy. During his years on earth, it was commonly known that Jesus would often go off alone to spend time in intimate prayer with the One he called Abba. The one constant throughout his existence had been this intimate connection with Abba, the Father.
And yet, here, when his hour had come and he faced the greatest trial of his life, that intimate connection was gone. He reached out to Abba, and all was blank. All was dark. His friends left him; one betrayed him to his enemies; and his Father abandoned him.
And yet, even in that darkest hour of all, Jesus – the One we cling to as our Lord and Master – cried out with faith and trust to Abba: “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.”
For where else could he turn? From where else would he find strength and comfort? For ever, God alone had been his strength, his hope, his life. And when he needed help the most, all he could do is to cry out to the One who had always been there for him.
St. John of the Cross spent nine months in that hell of a prison. Do you know why he is a Doctor of the Church? Abandoned and betrayed by his friends and his family, seemingly abandoned by God, John hit rock bottom, as we say. And in that darkness, that utter blackness, he realized that there was nothing and no one on earth upon whom he could truly depend. Sitting in that dark cell for nine months, John’s soul was set free from all the illusions of life on this earth, and he learned truly to trust in God alone. For where else could he turn? From where else would he find strength and comfort? His solitary confinement led him, not into a place of despair and anger and the desire for revenge, but to a place of solitary trust in God alone. His soul was set free and united with God in an intimate love which very few human beings have ever been privileged to experience.
Hope and love kept him alive, kept him moving. Finally this St. John of the Cross escaped by patiently unscrewing the lock on his door, sneaking past the guard, and then climbing out of a window by using a rope made of ripped strips of blankets. They only thing he brought with him when he escaped was the poems that he had written while in his cell – the most exquisite poetry of the love of God that the world has ever known, born in the pain and darkness of that prison.
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Praise be to God that we do not all have to go through the pain of the cross, the suffering of betrayal and abandonment and martyrdom, in order to learn such truth about our lives. I can only hope that I am not so dull and stubborn and cold of heart that God might need to break me in this way.
Let us all heed the truth, and take it to heart. There is nothing on this earth upon which we can rely for our life, in this world and the next. In Christ alone can we find grace, hope, freedom, peace which this world cannot give.
In Christ alone can we find the strength of soul to cry out with trust and confidence, even in the midst of our own pain and suffering, and to say with the Lord: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Amen.
This word from the cross comes from the 31st Psalm. Our Lord, our Teacher, our Master – he knew the psalms by heart. He prayed these psalms often, and even on the cross, the words of the psalms were on his lips. So let us practice our trust and confidence in God by saying together in unison, after each of these verses from Psalm 31, those same words spoken from the cross by our Teacher, our Master:
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Two great quotes from St. John of the Cross:
“Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?”
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