Good Friday (2025) - Fr James Baxter, OP

AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

Across Holy Week we hear the Passion read twice in its entirety, once on Palm Sunday, the other today, Good Friday. What comes through in hearing the whole Passion read is the range of suffering that Jesus endured.

There was the physical suffering from the different forms of torture he endured lasting several hours. There was moral suffering—the injustice of a false accusation, being treated as a criminal. There was the emotional suffering of having most of his disciples run away in fear pretending they have never met him.

Who was left? We have no way of knowing how many people witnessed the crucifixion of Christ. It could have been less than a hundred, or into the hundreds, or more than a thousand. Among them there was a range of responses to his crucifixion. There were some people who abused him. Some who were too scared to be with him up close, and who watched instead from a distance. Probably there were many others who simply walked past, unconcerned and unresponsive.

There are a few people, though, who had the courage to come right up close to the cross, among them his mother, the beloved disciple, and Mary Magdalene. We have no record of them saying anything or doing anything, other than being present, watching and praying in silence.

They embody the compassion that is essential to being a disciple, the willingness to share a part of your life with someone who suffers, and to be with them especially in their suffering. It can be a burden. The easier thing is to turn away, to run away, to harden our hearts. In the extraordinary scene at Calvary, there were many who did that, but not all.

Where would we be in that scene? The Church in its worship encourages us today to be among those who are right up close at the foot of the cross. It prepares us for this through the reading of the Good Friday liturgy. The first reading from Isaiah 52 is a prophecy from hundreds of years before the Passion. It is one of Isaiah’s “songs”, about a suffering servant of the Lord, who suffers because of us but who heals us through his wounds. It switches between the past (“ours were the sufferings he bore”), the present (“he offers his life in atonement”), and the future (“by his sufferings shall my servant justify many”). It’s a reading that first of all encourages us to see in Jesus the suffering servant, and to respond with repentance and with gratitude.

The second reading, from Hebrews 4 is a call to be confident in approaching the throne of grace. Especially on Good Friday we can see the “throne of grace” as the cross. It may not look like a throne. The sign above his head reading “The king of the Jews” and the crown that he wore may have been bestowed in irony. Jesus may not look like a king. In the prophecy from Isaiah the suffering servant has been so badly treated that he seems no longer human. But in the perfection of Jesus’ life, in his obedience and his love, Jesus is the perfect human being. So we can be confident in approaching the cross as the throne of grace to find mercy and grace from Jesus, emboldened by the Good Thief who does precisely that, and receives the promise of salvation.

So much of what Good Friday is about, with the devotion of the Stations of the Cross, the reading of the Passion and the veneration of the cross, is to bring us right up to the foot of the cross. At the veneration, the Christian faithful approach the cross and usually either kiss it or touch it. Beyond the external gesture, there are different ways to approach it. We can come in silent compassion for our suffering Lord. We can come, too, to the throne of grace with a confident prayer. It might be a prayer of gratitude. It might be a petition. It might be a prayer of intercession for someone we know who is suffering greatly. Or, if we have no words of our own, we can always look to the Good Thief, the one who looked at the tortured man across from him and saw a king: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Fr James Baxter, OP is the Parish Priest of Broadway, Glebe, and Pyrmont, New South Wales.