Good Friday Reflection-Richard Rohr

Today the primary human problem, the core issue that defeats human history, is both revealed and resolved.  It is indeed a "good" Friday.  The central issue at work is the human inclination to kill others, in any multitude of ways, instead of dying ourselves-to our own illusions, pretenses, narcissism, and self-defeating behaviors.  Jesus dies "for" us not in the sense of "in place of" but "in solidarity with."  The first is merely a heavenly transaction of sorts; the second is a transformation of our very soul and the trajectory of history. The soul needed one it could "gaze upon" long enough to know that it was we who were doing the "piercing" (John 19:37) and we who were being pierced in doing it. Jesus' body is a standing icon of what humanity is doing and what God suffers "with," "in," and "through" us.  It is an icon of utter divine solidarity with our pain and our problems. . . .It is our central transformative image for the soul. . . .Don't lessen its meaning by making it into a mechanical transaction whereby Jesus pays some "price" to God or the devil.  The only price paid is to the intransigent human soul-so it can see! On the cross, the veil between the Holy and the unholy is "torn from top to bottom" (Matthew 27:51), the "curtain of his body" becomes a "living opening" (Hebrews 10:20) through which we all can now walk into the Holy of Holies, which on different levels is both our own soul and the very heart of God. Nothing changed in heaven on Good Friday, but everything potentially changed on Earth.  Some learned how to see and to trust the contract between God and humanity.  God has always and forever loved what God created, "it was always good, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).  It was we who could not love and see the omnipresent goodness. From Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, pp. 137-139

Fr. Richard Rohr