The death of Jesus on the Cross on Good Friday is the culmination of the Holy Week which began last Sunday with the waving of palms and shouts of hosanna symbolising the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem before his death. These form the final days of Lent. The Cross, with the figure of Jesus on it, is the universal sign of all Christians. It is a paradox that while death on the Cross is considered the worst form of punishment by the Romans, it turns out to be one that is venerated and used everywhere as the holiest sign for believers in Jesus Christ. For, it is through this that salvation is brought to the sin-ridden world. The inscription that hung above Jesus’ head identifying the criminal, paradoxically again, read in Latin “Iesus Nazarenvs, Rex Iudeorvm”, meaning Jesus of Nazareth, King of Jews. How could a criminal have the tag of a king No wonder then that in the Christian theology, the Cross is considered to be a sign of contradiction because while it signified death by agonising humiliation and torture, it became a sign to be proud of because it implied Jesus’ obedience to God for the love of the world. It shows contradiction again because the one who hung there wrapped in nothing but a piece of loincloth, bleeding from head to foot, badly bruised was the one who had the power over the whole creation and its creatures. As an itinerant preacher, he cured the lepers, gave sight to the blind, made the lame walk and the dumb talk. Calming the storm in the sea came naturally to him and yet to show us the meaning of suffering, he bore the soldiers’ lashes, fell thrice beneath the weight of the cross, felt thirsty and bled to death there. His utterances from the Cross were unbelievable and almost contradictory, for instead of being upset with those who treated him cruelly, he prayed “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Mother Claudia of Tyburn Convent in London explains the Cross as: “There is a vertical coming down from heaven entering into earth. There is the horizontal, the human crossing the divine. If you take away one of those parts, the Cross does not exist. So it is a fusion, the union of those two aspects — the divine and the human — that gives the Cross its power and its significance that God is always with us and He is particularly with us in our sufferings And He cannot and will not separate Himself from us in our sufferings. He is always there to help us, to console us, to give us the strength to go on. It is a symbol of hope. You can look up at the Cross and see the vertical, and keep going up to God, to Heaven”.
