At The Foot Of The Cross

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Good Friday: The Celebration of the Lord’s Passion

Today's Readings:
[ Is 52:13—53:12; Ps 22; Heb 10:16-25; Jn 18:1—19:42 ]

On Good Friday, we are invited to not look away.

Isaiah’s suffering servant is “despised and rejected… a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity”. The psalmist cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. And in John’s Passion, we see Christ handed over, lifted up, and crucified—not as a tragic accident, but as a self-gift and completion of His mission. “It is finished”.

From a Franciscan perspective, this day reveals not only the depth of human sin, but the even greater depth of divine love. St. Francis of Assisi saw the Incarnation and the Cross as inseparable: God does not remain distant from suffering but enters fully into it. The crucified Christ is not a distant judge, but the poor, wounded one... in solidarity with all who suffer.

The reading from Hebrews reminds us that Christ’s offering is once for all: “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more”. This is not a transaction to appease an angry God, but an act of reconciling love. The Cross is where mercy and justice meet, not in punishment, but in restoration.

Good Friday strips away illusions of power and control. The King we behold wears no crown today but thorns. He reigns not from a throne, but from a cross. And yet, this is precisely how God chooses to save: through humility, vulnerability, and self-giving love.

Franciscan spirituality invites us to respond not with despair, but with imitation. To gaze upon the crucified Christ is to be transformed, to embrace humility, to love sacrificially, to stand with the marginalized and suffering. The Cross is not only something Christ endured; it is a way of life we are called to share.

Today, we do not rush to Easter. We remain at the foot of the Cross. We sit with the weight of it. And in that stillness, we discover a love that does not turn away, even from death itself.

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