by Msgr. Joseph P. Calise
During Holy Week, we hear the Passion read twice: today (Palm Sunday) and Good Friday.
On Good Friday, we hear the Passion according to St. John. This year, the Palm Sunday Passion reading for today is taken from St. Matthew. Each evangelist approaches the narration of the Passion from his own point of view, based upon his audience and the specific points he wants to emphasize.
Although the devotional “Seven Last Words” of Christ are taken from these readings, they are a compilation of sayings from each of them. Only Matthew and Mark quote Jesus as saying, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” This is a reference to a quotation from the Psalms and would make sense to their Jewish audience.
St. Luke, a convert of St. Paul, was a physician who wanted to emphasize the healing nature of Christ’s ministry to the sinners he called.
He alone includes the quotations: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” “Amen, I say to you, this day you will be with me in paradise,” and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
As we will hear on Good Friday, St. John emphasizes the cross as the triumph and glory of Christ. He wants to connect a newly formed, growing Church with its roots in the life and teaching of Christ. He wants to challenge them with the realization that Christ fulfilled his divine mission on the cross and entrusted the continuation of that mission to his Church.
The last three of the seven words that he recounts are “Woman, behold your son; Son, behold your mother,” “I thirst,” and “It is finished.” Regardless of which evangelist we read, it behooves us to understand precisely what the “It” in “It is finished” refers to. Strangely enough, the answer lies not in Easter but in Christmas.
If there is any Scripture verse that summarizes Christ’s mission statement, it is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He sent his only begotten Son so that those who believe in him might not perish but would have eternal life.”
Christ came to teach us how to live so that one day we could live forever in his Father’s kingdom. That meant teaching us his law of loving God and, because of our love for God, loving one another, even those who do not love us in return. It meant his self-offering as the perfect sacrifice to make restitution for humankind’s disobedience. He had to teach us, by example, how to live as faithful sons and daughters of God so that, after he made his ultimate sacrifice and returned to the Father, we would know how to live and, empowered by the Spirit, translate that knowledge into action. Christmas happened so that Good Friday and Easter could happen. Good Friday and Easter are salvific only because the One who died and rose is God made man in a Bethlehem stable. The “It” that “is finished” is the Father’s will. On the cross, Jesus’ ministry is not declared “over” but finished: Jesus’ part is complete, and our part begins.
The cross teaches us obedience to the Father’s will. It teaches us forgiveness. It teaches us hope. It teaches us love. As we begin Holy Week, may we remember that all Christ did was to leave us an example.
Msgr. Joseph P. Calise is the pastor of Transfiguration-St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish in Maspeth.