The short reflections for each of the three days of Triduum were published as one piece in Spirituality Mar/Apr 2012; No. 101 under the title “The Paschal Mystery.”

Good Friday

The 13^th century German mystic, theologian, and preacher Meister Eckhart once said that the question of Christmas is “What does it matter that the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus 2,000 years ago if I do not give birth to Jesus in my own day?” Perhaps the question today is not “were you there when they crucified my Lord?” but rather where, when, and how is Christ being crucified today. Where is Christi’s body being bruised, broken, and dehumanized in this place and in this time?

The urgent questions Good Friday evokes are whether or not we are awake and alert to, haunted and grieved by, concerned about and responsive to the suffering of Christ in our world now? Why and about what is God weeping today? The pressing and prophetic question is will we make God’s anguish our own?

Before his assassination, Archbishop Oscar Romero taught us that to share in the anguish of God means “to share in the destiny of the poor.” Before we can “let him easter in us,” to borrow Hopkin’s famous line about Christ, we must be in solidarity with those who are being crucified in our own day. Committed not merely to mimicking Jesus but to transposing into our lives and world the saving compassion he embodied as he hung between two criminals, what is paramount for Christians is not just what happened at Calvary but what we do with what happened at Calvary.

To make the sign of the cross is to align ourselves with all crucified people in our midst and beyond. To trace the cruciform on our body means to sign on for more than just staring at, giving money to, or praying for those who suffer. As the Jesuit theologians Ignacio Ellacuria and Jon Sobrino insist it means to ask and to act on the questions who and where are the crucified ones today and how can we take them down from the cross?

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