20 Good Friday Things That Caught My Eye Today (April 3, 2015)

Dominican Saints contemplating the Cross, from the sacristy of Sta Maria sopra Minerva https://t.co/zsNFwIzi1r

— Fr Lawrence Lew OP (@LawrenceOP) April 3, 2015

The Tenebrae hearse seen from the Altar on Good Friday https://t.co/p1hAJnmCRW

— Fr Lawrence Lew OP (@LawrenceOP) April 3, 2015

3. Three things from Thomas Aquinas to think about today.

Chad Pecknold writes:

For Aquinas, Good Friday is not so much a day without the Eucharist as it is the day which gives the Eucharist its very intelligibility as that sacrament by which we are united to Christ’s one true and perfect sacrifice. This is why he tells us that Christians reverence the Cross with the same worship (latreia) that we offer in the celebration of the Eucharist: we make the sign of the Cross in the Triune name and we bind ourselves to Christ crucified by kissing the image of the cross with a holy kiss—a kiss which aims not at the image but at Christ himself (ST III, q.25, a.4). Here the reasoning is striking: it is a kiss which presses past the image to the reality of Christ crucified himself.

4. St. John Chrysostom in the Liturgy of the Hours today:

If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt. Sacrifice a lamb without blemish, commanded Moses, and sprinkle its blood on your doors. If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.

If you desire further proof of the power of this blood, remember where it came from, how it ran down from the cross, flowing from the Master’s side. The gospel records that when Christ was dead, but still hung on the cross, a soldier came and pierced his side with a lance and immediately there poured out water and blood. Now the water was a symbol of baptism and the blood, of the holy eucharist. The soldier pierced the Lord’s side, he breached the wall of the sacred temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own. So also with the lamb: the Jews sacrificed the victim and I have been saved by it.

5. Fr. Steve Grunow:

God … imparts to us a mercy that exceeds the demands of justice, and sets a world gone wrong back right. Through our refusal of God we beg for wrath, but God doesn’t want to destroy us, God wants to save us.
…
Humility is the one thing we need this Holy Week.

6. Beautiful.

7. Hanging out with Sisters of Life, Fr. Roger Landry points out:

This year’s celebration of the Sacred Triduum is unique in the history of the Church. That’s because this year we’re marking the first Year of Consecrated Life in ecclesiastical annals, and like every special holy year, it’s meant to influence everything the Church does. This Year for Consecrated Life is meant to flavor how we celebrate this “three-days-in-one,” the “trinity” of days encompassing Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, and the Sacred Triduum will dramatically underline the fundamental nature of Christian consecration that is at the root of this holy year.

Were you there when they crucified my, Lord? #HolyWeek #GoodFriday pic.twitter.com/Ma2t861ZjQ

— DC Archdiocese (@WashArchdiocese) April 3, 2015

9. From a Dominican student brother at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.:

So little is good on this day. We know how the story ends, but in the moments from the garden to the court, from the pillar to the hill, little but violence, mockery, and pain are found. Except there is Veronica. Good Veronica. A glimmer of good in the darkest of days. It is the draw of Christ, the grace of his zealous heart, that calls her to seek his face. Like the woman at the well from whom the Lord desires a drink (Jn 4), Veronica comes to offer the drink of true faith to her Lord – a faith she has shown him in the middle of the anger and hate of this day.
Today the world watches and looks upon the Cross. Some of us know its weight and the pierce of its nails. Some of us resent its presence or grapple with its difficulty. Some of us shudder in our hearts with fear at its immensity. Yet, there is a young woman in Jerusalem who works her way through the soldiers and the crowd, to come close to the face of her Lord. This is most remarkable, to seek his face precisely in his suffering and to see his gentle smile of love for her, somehow letting her know that he will make all things new. She waits and looks upon the hill of salvation with eyes of faith – faith in his goodness. She holds his face in the cloth of her hands. She holds his face in her heart. She does not dare to turn away.
Today we look upon the Cross, this Good Friday. We look with Veronica, the beholder of the true face. We look with her who was permitted to come so close. The Cross is fixed in our minds and hearts today, and Veronica helps us not dare to turn away.

10. Peter Kreeft: How the Weakness of the Cross Makes Us Strong

11. Why did Jesus have to die the way he did? A video with Fr. Robert Barron.

12. Archbishop Fulton Sheen on Good Friday:

13. Wounded by the cross, a Good Friday homily from Fr. Thomas Joseph White (#OPPower):

There is no evil that cannot be forgiven by the power of the Cross. When the devil tries to tell us otherwise, he is a liar.

(You want this guide for spiritual warfare, by the way.)

14. A priceless ransom.

15.

What's love got to do with it? Stanley Hauerwas on the politics of the cross http://t.co/tdU04noGMB #GoodFriday pic.twitter.com/hsoC1hadNY

— ABC Religion&Ethics (@ABCReligion) April 3, 2015

16.

Are we prepared to stand with Mary at the foot of the #cross? #GoodFriday #HolyWeek http://t.co/1ymKm8LKAd

— Cardinal Wuerl (@Cardinal_Wuerl) April 3, 2015

17.

The Word of God is now silent. He goes quietly, forgivingly, to His trial and death. #GoodFriday http://t.co/Y3VLn1F3wg

— Archbishop Fisher OP (@AnthonyFisherOP) April 3, 2015

18.

"The triumph of love will be the last word of human history". Benedict XVI

— FrSteveGrunow (@FrSteveGrunow) April 2, 2015

19. This Way of the Cross is so rich, from Cardinal Ratzinger in 2005. (This is also a beautiful reflection on Good Friday from B16 in 2012.) So is this guide to examination of conscience from Pope Francis last Palm Sunday.

20.