The Sacred Triduum – Good Friday

Triduum Sacrum: Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12; Psalm 31; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1 – 19:42

  Coronavirus.

Did you know that “corona” is the Latin word for “crown”?  Like the crown of thorns woven by Roman soldiers to mock Jesus’ rule as “King of the Jews”,  so a crown, a corona, has been placed on the head of humanity to mock our sense of power.

For the coronavirus mocks humanity, …mocks our pride of self-sufficiency and independence as in forced isolation and quarantine we are rediscovering how much we actually do need each other.

Corona mocks our borders and class privilege for the virus respects no national border nor class distinction from entertainment and sports celebrities, to prime ministers; even heirs to monarchical thrones.

Corona mocks our self – appointed national power as governments find themselves impotent, for no military or economic might can defeat such a hidden enemy.…mocks our culture’s insistent love affair, if not addiction, with youthfulness and health as our dead are stacked in warehouses – unburied.

Corona mocks our knowledge and sense of security as an invisible enemy infiltrates our bodies. Crowned and robed in purple, Pilate brought Jesus out for the people to see.

“Ecce homo”

– “Behold the man!”  In doing so Pilate holds up a mirror to humanity; a mirror in which we need to unflinchingly and honestly look at and see our sense of power mocked and crowned in Jesus of Nazareth.

This disease is not sent as a punishment from God.  The sacred scriptures have shown us repeatedly that God while not causing an event can use such an event to teach us, to bring us closer to God’s very self that we might experience God’s mercy and compassion.  And might this lesson be found in a curious parallel in John’s Passion?

There are two seemingly unconnected items that are in some sense bound together.  A crown of thorns woven by Roman soldiers and a seamless tunic woven in one piece by a woman, Jesus’ mother perhaps?   But what did the seamless garment instinctively speak to those hardened, unsympathetic soldiers that even they knew enough not to tear it into pieces?

One act of weaving mocked the dignity of humanity; another act of weaving can bind the spiritual wounds of humanity.

When the coronavirus withdraws – and it will.  When the mocking crown is removed from humanity and set aside we will need the seamless garment to bind.  How will this experience of the coronavirus change us?  …change our relationships to one another?  …our relationship with God?

It will all depend on what you and I choose to weave?

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PLEASE NOTE: Homilies presented here are also being videotaped and put up on the Saint Mary, Oneonta website: http://www.SMCCOneonta.org.