Instruction for Good Friday

Continued:


AT Golgotha, in sight of the temple and city of Jerusalem, in the presence of two or three millions of Jews, who had come to the city from all lands, Jesus, the Son of God, hung upon the cross, an expiatory sacrifice for mankind burdened with all manner of sin. Near the cross of her dying Son stood Mary, His mother, filled with grief; by her side John, the beloved disciple, and kneeling at the foot of the cross almost insensible from sorrow and anguish, convulsively winding her arms around the wood of the cross, was Mary Magdalen, the penitent.
 
On a cross at the right hand hung a penitent thief turned towards the Saviour; at the left hand on another cross groaned another criminal of impenitent heart, blaspheming the Holy One of Israel. Around the agonizing Saviour stood the Scribes and Pharisees, that hypocritical class of practiced miscreants,who hated and persecuted the innocent Lamb Jesus, even in death, who blind to all the predictions of the prophets whose books they had read, blind to the actual miracles which Jesus had wrought before their eyes to prove His divinity and His mission, filled with envy and hatred, reviled the dying Redeemer. At a distance stood a crowd of curious, indifferent people, who had come to Jerusalem to attend the feast of the Passover, and having heard of Jesus were present at His crucifixion. Not far from them the rough soldiers and executioners lay around, dividing among themselves the Saviour's clothes and casting lots for His seamless garment.

This was the society that surrounded the Son of God and Redeemer of the world bleeding on the cross, and in their different phases they are types of the men of today. Only few were there who clung to the Saviour in unwavering faith and true love, ready to die with Him, and for Him. There were few who suffered all taunts and sneers, all revilings and blasphemies, and departed not from the cross. Of these three were especially faithful, viz. Mary, John, and Magdalen. Those who like Mary and John are pure and innocent, or like Magdalen are weeping for their sins, who confess Jesus with their heart and lips, cling faithfully to Him, and permit neither persecution nor death to separate them from Him, are like the faithful three at the cross.

As then by the cross, so today, the number of the faithful is small, and great is the number of those who, like the careless spectators of the crucifixion, are not decided enemies of Jesus crucified, nor yet His firm friends. They have indeed been baptized in the name of Jesus, they remain externally with the Catholic Church, which Christ founded, but they are sunk in lukewarmness, have no living faith, and are wavering to and fro like a reed between the world and Jesus. They fear the sneers of the so-called learned and enlightened, many of whom are well represented by the Scribes and Pharisees, who, having no faith in Christ themselves, bear in their hearts only hatred and contempt for His Church; they shun the cross, because it is too heavy for their sensuality; they do not, it is true, commit public crimes, they prize highly a good name, occasionally observe the law of the Church, but are accessible to every error; their ears incline to every blasphemy against the religion of Jesus and His ministers, the priests.

Instead of standing fearlessly and boldly for Christ, for the holy faith He has taught, and which the Church teaches,they turn away, are silent, even go with the Church's enemies that they may not be sneered at. The are neither hot, nor cold, so that the words of the Scriptures are verified in them: Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth. (Apoc. iii. 16.) The Lord casts away from Him these lukewarm, indifferent Christians, as nauseous saliva, and leaves them to their destruction. The true Pharisees of our day are those who purposely close their eyes to the light of truth, who have put aside faith in Jesus, and are no longer disposed to receive instruction. Their pride, their egotism has blinded them , with their poor reason they wish to understand the mysteries of the Almighty, with their weak intellect to fathom His ways, even seek to be equal to God; they deny every revealed truth, they deny the existence of heaven and hell, they propose to live like the animals, without God, but their end is ruin!

Few of them, having seen their error, as the thief on the cross at the right hand of Jesus, turn repentingly to the Redeemer; obdurate as the robber and murderer at His left, the
Pharisees of our day cease not to blaspheme the Crucified, and to revile His holy Church. These are assisted by the apostates and unbelievers, who, like the soldiers and executioners, divide among themselves His clothes, and cast lots for His seamless garment. Those clothes which the soldiers divided among themselves, are the truths which the apostates and heretics yet retain after their apostasy from the Church. They have divided these truths, for they have separated themselves into thousands of sects, and ppsrs,ess only portions of the one truth, which Jesus has laid down in His Church, whole and complete. "Upon my vesture they have cast lots."


This seamless vesture of Christ is His holy Church that cannot be separated or divided, she is one, and must remain one to the end of time. Concerning this one true Church, the sects all quarrel, all want to be the true Church without considering that, as but one soldier, by lots, received Christ's seamless garment, so only one association of men can be the true Church, and that is association which Christ has chosen.

Thus we find at the cross on Golgotha the different classes of people of our day represented, namely, the pure and innocent; the repenting sinners, firm adherents of Jesus and His teachings; as also the lukewarm, wavering, nominal Christians; obdurate heretics, professed infidels and apostates. So today mankind is divided into like parties. To which party do you belong, O Christian soul?

 To which do you wish to belong? Choose! The time of the division is near. The Lord already holds in His hand the winnowing shovel to clear His floor. If you are not a firm adherent of Jesus and His Church, in the storm that is gathering you will be blown like chaff. If you remain with the small group at the cross, in persevering courage, you will stand firm, and on the day when the cross shall appear in the clouds of heaven, you, with Mary, the mother of the faithful, with John and with Magdalen, will triumph forever, as a victorious knight of the cross. Decide!

The Reproaches of the Passion - I

One of the most beautiful ways to follow the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is to meditate on the Improperia, or Reproaches of the Passion. The Improperia are a series of lamentations from the Old Testament about the ingratitude of the Jewish people, which are a prefigure of the Passion of Our Lord. They are twelve reproaches that start with a prophetic lamentation by Micheas (6:3-4).

The Church sings them at the ceremony of the adoration of the Holy Cross on Good Friday after the death and burial of Our Lord. Following the consummation of the Passion, the gratitude of the Church turns to the Cross, that vile instrument of torture which became the sublime instrument of our Redemption. In my opinion, the Improperia epitomize the poignant contrast between the innocence of Our Lord and the ingratitude and guilt of the Jewish people.

They present Our Lord questioning His people, reminding them of the benefits God gave them, and asking them why they inflicted such torments on Him. There are twelve Reproaches that are sung in the same plain-song melody.

When we hear the Reproaches, we should not just consider them as past historical facts from the Old Testament evoked by the liturgy of the Church after the Passion, but we should apply His lamentations to our days and to ourselves. Our piety should imagine Our Lord in each step of His Passion – Agony in the Garden of Olives, Scourging, Crowning with Thorns, Way of the Cross, Crucifixion, and Death – as if He were present before us suffering only for the sins of each one of us. We should imagine Him asking each one of us those poignant questions He addresses to His people.

It is common knowledge that Divine Providence gives special graces for each commemoration of the Church. During Holy Week, there are, therefore, torrents of graces – necessary graces, abundant graces, and super-abundant graces – that Heaven sends us so that we might unite ourselves to Our Lord and Our Lady. We should open our souls for those graces especially in the steps of the Passion with which we have more affinity.

The normal fruit of these meditations should be a sentiment of remorse for the evil we have done. Not a disturbed, agitated remorse that leads to despair, the remorse of Judas, but the tranquil, peaceful, and bitter remorse full of confidence that invites us to ask Our Lady’s help and change our lives, the remorse of St. Peter.

It is a time to remember our past life, the graces we received that cost so much suffering for Our Lord, and the bad or insufficient responses we made to those graces. Should we not repent and repair for our offenses? Should we not make reparation for the evil we have done? Should we not shift our lives in another direction in order to unite ourselves more to Our Lord? We should ask these graces by the merits of the wounds He received and the tears Our Lady shed. We should be confident that we can receive those graces because even such a great sinner like the good thief St. Dismas was forgiven and won Paradise.



Our Lord is perfect and never did evil to anyone. He asks these questions to emphasize the ingratitude of those responsible for the crime of the Crucifixion. He invites them, “Answer me!” He knows that the guilty ones do not have a response, but He is inviting them to repentance.

In fact, the Jewish people were liberated by Our Lord from the land of Egypt. They were slaves there for centuries and God delivered them and led them to the Promised Land. So Our Lord asks: “Are you offended because I delivered you from your captivity? O, my sons, is this a reason for your hatred for Me?”

The passage of the Hebrew People from their captivity in Egypt to the Promised Land is a symbol of the passage of all of us born in original sin to the state of grace by means of the Redemption of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is also a symbol of the passage of our souls from the state of mortal sin to that of grace. How many times have our souls been dead because of our sins, and how many times has Our Lord restored us to the life of grace?

So, the question He poses to the Jews is also valid for us. He is asking us: “My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? For I led you out of the death of sin, and you led your Savior to the Cross. My son, see the state of your soul.”


Here is another figure of the liberation of Egypt presented in a different way. The manna is a symbol of the Holy Eucharist. The reproach for us would be this: “Because of My love for mankind, I assume the form of the Holy Species to live among you and enter your hearts, but you crucify your Savior.”

The splendid land is the Catholic Church. She is the perfect land, the homeland of our souls. To be Catholic is the highest honor and the greatest happiness God could give us. Is this the reason why we make Him suffer?

It is both a tender recrimination and an implacably logical question for which we have no answer. Any possibility of a justification vanishes in thin air. Our only response is to fall on our knees, repent, weep, and change our lives. We can only turn to Our Lady and ask her help and make our act of contrition.

It is beautiful to hear these strophes of the Reproaches being sung by a good choir because the questions of Our Lord resound with a special tone of sweetness and supplication that touch the soul. They demonstrate in a magnificent way the blend of strength and tenderness present in the infinite sanctity of the soul of Our Lord Jesus Christ.



The Reproaches of the Passion - II

The third Reproach is this:

This reproach is directed to the Jewish people. God planted the Chosen People in the Promised Land as a vineyard of great excellence. God did not plant a common vineyard, He chose to cultivate one of great quality. This vineyard was meant to turn out sweet grapes and a superior wine, but instead it produced bitter fruit, bitter far beyond all imagination.

He gives two examples. When He was thirsty, they did not give Him good wine or even simple water to drink; instead they gave Him vinegar. When He was dead and hanging from the Cross, instead of receiving some consolation from His children, they sent a man to pierce the side of their Savior. That lance pierced the Heart of Our Lord, the symbol of His love for them, and the last drop of blood flowed from His Sacred Body. That is, the cruelty reached its apex. This was the ingratitude of the Jewish people.

This reproach is made not just to the Jews, but also to us. How should we understand it? Each of us is a special vineyard that Our Lord planted in the most precious terrain of the Catholic Church. After the See of St. Peter, the place I love most is the baptismal font by means of which I entered the Catholic Church. There I received the most precious grace of my life, which is to be planted by Our Lord in the vineyard of the Catholic Church. This is much more than to enter the Promised Land. The Church is the motherland of my soul.

Given this great benefit, I should have produced the sweetest of fruit, I should have followed His Commandments, I should have loved and completely obeyed Him. I should never have strayed from Him even for a minute. But my life was not like this. I did things that offended Him, I sinned. I became a bitter grape that poorly repays the care of the One who solicitously planted it .Worse than that: when Our Lord needed my help, when He needed the pure, limpid water of honest reparation, I was lukewarm and indifferent. I gave Him vinegar to drink.

After He died for me, I sinned. I was ungrateful for His love. My sin pierced His Heart with the coldness of my egoism and the hardness of my impenitence. I became the spear of the soldier piercing the Heart of the Redeemer. I drew the last drop of Blood from His Sacred Body.

Tradition tells us that Longinus, the Roman soldier who lunged the spear into the Heart of Our Lord, was nearly blind. After he thrust his spear into the Heart of Christ, some of the water and blood that flowed from it fell onto his face and touched his eyes. He was cured immediately of his blindness and converted as a consequence. He became a saint, and throughout his life St. Longinus repented for that act.

Just as He forgave the cruelty and cured the blindness of Longinus, we should ask Our Lord to also forgive our hardness, coldness, blindness, and ingratitude and give us the grace to repent and be saints to properly love and serve Him.


The fourth Reproach is this:

When the Jews were in Egypt, God send a plague to convince the Pharaoh to release the Jewish people. God killed all the first-born sons of Egypt. It was a scourge that chastised the most important and richest nation of the time. It was the greatest miracle that God had ordered the Angels to work through Moses, and it was also the decisive one, because after that the Pharaoh let the Jewish people go free.

It is interesting to see how God considers this chastisement that He made on one people as a mercy for His people. According to today’s erroneous and sentimental notion of God, He would never send a chastisement to anyone because this would be “against Divine Goodness.” This is not what the Catholic Church teaches in these Reproaches of the Passion. God was infinitely good when He punished the Egyptians, so much so that He presents this example as one of the poignant landmarks of His love for His people. It is useful, in passing, to see how Liberalism is corrupting our minds.

God was extremely merciful in liberating His Chosen People and allowing them to go free in order to fulfill their mission, which was to prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah. But when Our Lord came, instead of receiving Him as they were meant to do, they delivered Him to be scourged by the Romans.

It is a poignant contradiction: God scourged the most powerful people of the time, the Egyptians, to free the Jews; the Jews imprisoned Our Lord and delivered Him to the Romans, the most powerful people of their time, to be scourged.

How many times does our human respect and servile fear of public opinion lead us to compromise on Catholic principles? How many times have we set aside and laughed at Catholic customs in order to fit in with the revolutionary world? How many times have we attacked traditional practices of Christendom in order to follow the fashion of the moment?

Each time we did one of these things we were whipping Our Lord; we were lacerating His pure flesh; we were causing His Divine Blood to spill on the ground, we were ridiculing His Royalty as Lord of the Universe. We should be convinced of our cowardice, repent, and ask Our Lady to give us strength and courage to affirm our Catholic principles before the world.


The fifth Reproach is this:

The Pharaoh was considered the symbol of the Devil, because he was the highest earthly power of the time and wanted to destroy the Chosen People who bore in them the seed of the promise, the Messiah. The Jews were liberated by God from the Pharaoh, who persecuted them. God drowned the Egyptians in the Red Sea. Instead of being grateful for that and for the Redemption that Our Lord would shortly bring to all mankind, the Jews delivered Our Lord to the high priests to be killed. That is, both the high priests and the Chosen People were acting as partisans of the Devil. The people had been symbolically liberated from the Devil by the Pharaoh’s drowning in the Red Sea, just as they would be delivered in fact when Our Lord would drown the power of the Devil by His Redemption.

It is another poignant contradiction and example of ingratitude. It also has an application for us today.

How many times, in our desire to please bad priests, did we forget to follow God? How many times did we follow their progressivist theories and relaxed morals without the least analysis just because they were priests? How often have we spoken against and even slandered good Catholics who represent the cause of Our Lord Jesus Christ in order to please this or that ecclesiastic who hates those good Catholics? How many times have we blindly obeyed bad priests rather than Our Lord?

On one hand, we should always remember that priests are other Christs and Bishops are the Princes of the Church, Successors of the Apostles. As such, they deserve the highest respect and obedience. On the other hand, we cannot forget that many times in History they were the leaders of heresies and moral compromises who led the faithful to the worst consequences. The example of the high priests of the Synagogue plotting the death of Our Lord is there to teach us this.

Therefore, it is not enough for us to follow ecclesiastics no matter what they are or teach; it is necessary to discern who does not deserve to be followed. Otherwise, we will be delivering our souls to death, and we will be delivering Our Lord to another Crucifixion.

Inspired by this reproach we should ask Our Lady to give us all possible respect for the Clergy and Hierarchy, but also to give us a cogent vigilance and a strong determination to not follow their errors, should they exist.


The sixth Reproach is this:

The comments made in the third reproach can be applied also to this one.


The seventh Reproach is this:

God led the Jewish people in the desert as a pillar of clouds during the day and a pillar of light at night. That is, He never left them without orientation; they always knew where to go to carry out the will of God.

The ingratitude of the Jews was flagrant when they led their Messiah to the Pretorium to be judged by Pilate, a man who had no knowledge of the truth. He was absolutely incapable of judging anyone, much less Truth itself, the Word Incarnate.

This has an application to our lives. God gave us Revelation and its secure interpretation by the traditional Magisterium of the Catholic Church. It is a column of clouds during the day, the normal life of Catholics, and a column of light at night, the times of crisis when it is difficult to distinguish truth and error. It is always there to show us what the flawless truth is and the right path to follow in order to carry out the will of God.

How many times have I denied this clear and constant teaching of Holy Mother Church? How many times have I adhered to modernist and progressivist novelties moved by laziness in reacting against the mainstream? Was I not leading Our Lord – the Catholic Faith – to be judged by Pilate – people who have no notion of what the truth is?

We should ask Our Lady of Sorrows, who followed the steps of the Passion in an exemplary way, to increase our love for truth and give us fidelity to the traditional Magisterium of the Church, no matter who is against it. Even if the highest judges on earth would condemn this Magisterium, we should continue to follow it, as Our Lady followed Our Lord to the very end.



The Reproaches of the Passion - III


The eighth Reproach is this:

The manna from heaven was a very exquisite food that had many delicate flavors. A person could eat as much as he wanted of it without ever becoming full. It fell from the sky abundantly and fortified the Hebrew people during their march through the desert. The people only had to gather it from the ground where it had fallen; no one had to make any other effort for it.

The manna was a symbol of the Holy Eucharist, which has all the exquisite flavors desired by each soul. It opens our spiritual appetite to receive more graces and it is there endlessly for us to enjoy. It brings abundant graces to fortify us for our earthly pilgrimage. No one has to work to have it, for it comes to us by the merits of Our Redeemer.

How do we repay Our Benefactor for this priceless gift? We repay Him with blows and scourges.

What do the blows and scourges refer to here? They are the rejections we make when Holy Mother Church asks us to fulfill our Catholic duty. She asks us to defend the Faith denied by so many people; she asks us to uphold her Morals that are being flouted by all kinds of criminal actions; she asks us to preserve her Liturgy that is being profaned; she asks us to uphold her Exegesis that is being corrupted. In short, she asks us to defend all of her Tradition that is being destroyed by Progressivism.

When she reminds us that our duty as Catholics is to defend her, we often turn our backs on her as if to say: “That is not my concern. I have other things to do.” This kind of answer is not only an act of egoism and cowardice, but a blow to the face of Our Lord. It is a scourge of the whip on His back on His Way of the Cross.

Let us pray to Our Lady, who was always faithful to everything God asked of her, to give us the courage to face our duty, accept it and accomplish it so that we may be a consolation for Our Lord in His Passion, and not the cause of more blows to His Face and scourges on His Back.


The ninth Reproach is this:

When the Hebrew people were thirsty in the desert, Moses touched a stone and water miraculously sprang from it. Instead of being grateful for this miracle, the Jewish people gave Our Lord vinegar and gall to drink when He thirsted on the Cross

The application to our spiritual life is the same as our commentary regarding the third reproach [click here]. We should give Our Lord the water of reparation for the offenses He receives, but instead we show ingratitude. We give Him gall and vinegar to drink.


The tenth Reproach is this:

God favored the armies of the Hebrew people, and they defeated all the pagan Kings who occupied the Promised Land. The final and complete victory over those enemy Kings was achieved by King David, who established the Kingdom of Israel in its most glorious period. To achieve this, God worked many miracles and chastised those enemy Kings in a multitude of ways. That is, He struck down the heads of their enemies.


What was the retribution? Instead of exalting their God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Jewish people treated Him as a bandit. Even more, they struck His head with a reed.

This kind of sin against the Sacred Head of Our Lord refers to the sins of the elites, the heads of the spiritual and temporal spheres.

Are we part of the spiritual or temporal elites? How many times did we approve laws that were against Catholic principles? How many times did we cause scandal to our subordinates?

Even if we are not among the elites, how many times did we approve those bad laws and scandals that came from above? Instead of protesting against such outrages, how many times were we silent so that we might indolently enjoy the good life?

If we did such things or indifferently tolerated the offenses of others, we were striking Our Lord’s Head with a reed.

Catholic principles should apply not only to some aspects of Religion, but to every facet of our spiritual and temporal life. Temporal society should be constructed upon those principles.

Let us ask Our Lord to help us understand how to apply Catholic principles to temporal society and fight to implant them everywhere.

This is the best reparation we can offer for our sins and omissions in this regard.


The eleventh Reproach is this:

The Jewish people were a mere tribe, not even a recognized nation. Because they were faithful to their vocation, God made them a great nation and a great people in the time of David and Solomon. They became respected everywhere.

What did they do in retribution? When He came to them, instead of making Him their King, they despised Him. They gave Him a crown of thorns instead of a royal crown.


Again, this reproach is made with an implacable logic that offers no exit. But it is also an appeal to acknowledge the profound ingratitude offered in face of such Goodness, and to repent.

The suffering of the crowning of thorns is symbolic of the sins and ingratitude of those who have positions of authority or influence over others – parents, employers, and religious as well as temporal superiors. The heads of institutions must always take positions that glorify Our Lord Jesus Christ. If they do the opposite, they are crowning His Head with thorns.

Those thorns are the bad orders each one of us has given or the bad influence we exerted over our subordinates. They should receive truth and goodness from us, but instead we induced them to follow error and influenced them to commit sins.

Was I always a good parent? Or did I advise my children to follow the easier and more popular path that was a wrong one? How many times did I influence persons to follow the ways of the world rather than to fulfill their duties before God? Did I always teach my students adamantine Catholic doctrine, or did I teach what was more convenient for my career or to be popular?

Each time that one of us influenced someone else to do bad things, we were crowning Our Lord with thorns.

We should see this, repent of it, and make reparation for the evil done.


The twelfth and last Reproach is this:

The Jewish people came to hold a considerable degree of influence in several Empires of the Ancient World. Joseph and then Moses were chosen to be the equivalent of first ministers of the Pharaohs in the Egyptian Empire. Daniel was a personal adviser of Nabuchodonosor, monarch of the Babylonian Empire, and afterwards became the advisor of Cyrus, head of the Persian Empire. Esther married King Assuerus and became Queen of the Persians and Medes. These are just a few examples of the influence and power the Jews acquired through those who were faithful to God.

But instead of acknowledging how God exalted them, the Jewish people raised Our Lord to the height of the Cross, exposing Him to general execration and derision.

The elect Continent of the New Covenant was Europe. While it was faithful to Our Lord, Europe grew in power and influence until it became the light that illuminated the whole world. All its marvels were because God was with it.

But how did Europe recompense all those privileges received? It was ungrateful. It created the Revolution to destroy Christendom. From then on, it marched inexorably to avoid Our Lord. Not content with destroying Christendom, the leaders of the Revolution pushed the same revolutionary errors into the Catholic Church in order to destroy her as well, if it were possible. That is to say, Europe crucified Our Lord again, as the Jews had done before.



How many times have we collaborated with this destruction of Christendom in our own countries? As European descendants, how many times did we deny the inheritance of Christendom that we carry in our blood and souls? How many times by acts or omissions were we accomplices in the destruction of the Catholic Church by our adherence to the modernist and progressivist principles that direct this demolition?

We should ask Our Lady to help us understand the magnitude of the consequences of our sins, and implore her to help us change our lives in order to please Our Lord and her on this earth so that we might be with them eternally in Heaven.

These Reproaches of the Passion should make us very serious and arouse great compassion in us. But they should not create sensations of frustration and discouragement.

Even if we are in a position of misery and guilt, from the height of the Cross Our Lord shows us His face of mercy. This is why the Church sings these Improperia during the ceremony of the Adoration of the Holy Cross. It is to invite us to repent and return to the right path.

He is the God of Mercy. He has pity on us and wants us to be saved. Our Lord wants me to be with Him for all eternity. This is why He shed His Blood for me.

By the merits of His Holy Blood and the tears of Our Lady of Sorrows, we should ask for the grace to change our lives and be faithful to whatever they ask of us.

Let us, then, end this meditation filled with compassion and hope.