Homily for Good Friday 2023.

The summer after my fourth year in seminary I had the opportunity to serve as a chaplain for eleven weeks at a Catholic hospital in Indianapolis. As a priest, I get called to the hospital about once a week or so, and so my experience that summer was great preparation for my future ministry. My daily responsibilities as a chaplain included visiting patients on the floor I was assigned to, and bringing Holy Communion or arranging a visit with a priest when it was requested. My presence was also requested anytime a patient was in danger of death. These were some of the most challenging moments when I was called to pray and offer words of comfort when there was often very little comfort to be had.

I remember one particular moment vividly. I was called to pray with a family whose loved one was about to die. When I arrived at the room, I was given a few relevant details about the patient’s condition. The patient was the same age as I was and he was dying of an overdose. He was also a husband and a father, and it just so happened to be Father’s Day weekend. As I prayed with the family who was in the room with him, and stood next to the bed of someone who could very well have been me, the question that immediately came to mind was “Why?” “Why would God allow such a thing to happen, especially to someone as young as me, especially to a father on Father’s Day weekend?” “Why?”

It was a question that I had pondered before, but perhaps never so deeply, and it preoccupied me for the rest of the summer. It’s good that it did, because it is one of the most common questions a priest is faced with, especially in times of great tragedy. It’s a question, of course, that all of us are faced with, at least at some point in our lives. If we’re not faced with it because of some tragedy in our own life, we are often faced with it as we contemplate the tragedies of others: those of our family, or the tragedies we are faced with regularly on the news. “Why would God allow such a thing to happen—to me, to them, to any of us?” “Why?”

Every time we come to church, we have the opportunity to make an act of faith. Every time we say “Amen,” after one of the prayers, or before receiving Holy Communion, we are making an act of faith. “I believe what has been said.” “I believe that this truly is the Body of Christ.” On Good Friday, we have the opportunity to make another act of faith. We don’t make it by saying “Amen,” but by coming forward and adoring the Cross. When we adore the Cross—when we bow, genuflect, touch, or kiss the Cross—we are making an act of faith. We are saying, “I believe,” to the claim that God can bring good out of evil. We are making an act of faith in the face of suffering, even tragic suffering, faith in the claim that God can make all things work for good for those who love Him.

The word which echoes throughout the liturgy today is the word “Behold.” After Jesus is crowned with thorns and wrapped in purple cloak, Pilate says to the chief priest and guards: “Behold, the man!” Pilate then presents Jesus to the crowds: “Behold, your king!” Jesus also uses this word twice on the Cross, when placing his mother in the care of his beloved disciple, and vice versa: “[Jesus] said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’” We will hear this word again, three times, when the Cross is brought into the church for adoration. “Behold the wood of the Cross.” “Behold the wood of the Cross.” “Behold the wood of the Cross.”

When faced with suffering—Jesus’ suffering, our own suffering, and the suffering of others—the Church invites us to behold that suffering. Instead of rejecting it, instead of merely resigning ourselves to it, we are invited to behold it, to embrace it. We are invited to make an act of faith: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you can bring good out of evil. For if you were able to bring about our salvation from your Son’s death on the Cross, which was the worst tragedy the world has seen, then you can bring good out of own crosses—both mine and others’.”

Brothers and sisters, when we come to adore the Cross this afternoon, we are not just making an act of faith before the Cross, the Cross of Jesus, we are making an act of faith before our own cross and the crosses of others. Even as we are inviting to make an act of faith when the minister says to us, “The Body of Christ,” we are invited to make an act of faith when we adore the Cross. The loving gesture we make in adoration is our “Amen” to the words, “Behold the wood of the Cross.” “Yes, Lord, I believe. I do not fully understand why you allow suffering, but I also do not fully understand why you hide yourself under the appearance of bread and wine. I do not fully understand, but I believe.” I say, “Amen.”