Today is a time for what the Italians call "reposo." It is time to sit quietly (usually resulting in a short nap). Let's skip the second part for now! Let us recall two sentences from the victim hanging from the Good Friday cross. Just quietly allow his words entrance to your heart -- with calm, with peace and with a latent and joyous, a quiet realization of the gift of redemption tha we recalled yesterday.
Nearing the final breaths of his human life, Mary's boy-child grown man must have struggled to say "It is finished." Do not hear these words as from a loser, a victim. From the babe of Bethlehem you are hearing the words of victory: mission accomplished! I have fulfilled my Father's will. This victor, although physically shattered, utters words that shatter sin, death and Satan himself. Can you sense the joy that must have ended so much waiting in the hearts of those who had died before this redeeming death?
As in every life there is a final sentence, a final affirmation to one's life and mission, a word to survivors. "Father," Jesus probably whispered -- a loud voice or shout would probably have been physically impossible. "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Luke would not record these eternal words to be those of anger, frustration or pain. These are the words every Jewish child would learn from a faithful parent to be the final words from one's lips before falling asleep each evening. What a way to close out a day: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Using Jesus' native language that he learned as a child, Luke completes the Jesus life on earth, his moment of dying, like the child that was falling into sleep in his mother's or father's arms. No bitter end, simply the acknowledgment that the Father's wish was completed in a loving, filial giving of himself to death and the completion of his mission.
Let these thoughts, heard yesterday in a Good Friday presentation of the Seven Last Words by Father Robert Rocusek, the Chaplain at Gonzaga College High School, Washington, DC at St. Ann Parish, offer you a peaceful time of reflection and prayer as we await the final sign of our redemption made real for us in the Resurrection of Jesus from his tomb. The picture above is the entrance to the tomb created in the Franciscan Monastery, Washington, DC.
In your prayerful reposo take the time to thank God for all of the graces you have received during the Lenten journey.
