For the first few years since I started attending Mass, I hesitated to participate in the veneration of the cross on Good Friday.\u00a0 Despite my growing fascination with liturgical symbolism, it somehow seemed a bridge too far for my more austere Protestant sensitivities,\u00a0so that on first observation\u00a0I could only see the kissing of an object.\u00a0 And then one year \u2013 my last as a non-Catholic, as it turned out \u2013 something changed.<\/p>\n
What first got me to the front of the church that year was something that jumped out at me from the homily about \u201ckissing the feet of the crucified king who opposes Caesar.\u201d\u00a0 I remember very little about the homily itself besides that particular takeaway, but the sheer political subversiveness of it transformed the meaning of the act for me.\u00a0 And sure enough, right there in St. John\u2019s Passion is the line that still jumps out at me every year:<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Which means, by implication, that everyone who makes himself a Caesar opposes this king.\u00a0 (Or herself: we women are not immune to this temptation.)<\/p>\n I still get a chuckle from what I once heard someone point out, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, about the outward-expanding pattern of the lengthy Good Friday intercessions: \u201cFirst we pray for the Church and the pope and all the faithful, then we pray for those preparing to receive the sacraments, then we pray for all Christians, then we pray for the Jewish people, then we pray for those who don\u2019t believe in Christ, then we pray for those who don\u2019t believe in God at all \u2026 and then<\/em> we pray for the politicians!\u201d<\/p>\n In all seriousness, surrounded as they are on all sides by temptations of Caesarian power that opposes the Christ crucified daily in his most vulnerable brothers and sisters, those in public office surely do need our prayers.\u00a0 And we need\u00a0the cross as a sign of contradiction now as much as ever.<\/p>\n The need for such as sign is not unique to our present time, or even to our present Caesar, who despite all appearances is himself not all that unique.\u00a0 After all, egotistical rulers, or even egomaniacal ones,\u00a0are all too common.\u00a0 But a king who takes the form of a slave?\u00a0 Let alone one who, of all people, has every right to claim equality with God, descending so low as to suffer one of the most torturous and public forms of criminal execution in human history?\u00a0 That is jarringly unique \u2013 and it is because of this<\/em> that he is also our one and only Lord, the name above every name (cf. Philippians 2).<\/p>\n The one we venerate on the cross is the anti-Caesar.\u00a0 Once we see him as such, the veneration of his cross becomes the profoundest possible act of resistance.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first few years since I started attending Mass, I hesitated to participate in the veneration of the cross on Good Friday.\u00a0 Despite my growing fascination with liturgical symbolism, it somehow seemed a bridge too far for my more austere Protestant sensitivities,\u00a0so that on first observation\u00a0I could only see the kissing of an object.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2932,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,6,12,13,14,15],"tags":[16,17],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversion","category-lent","category-liturgy","category-politics","category-power","category-prophetic-witness","tag-good-friday","tag-veneration-of-the-cross"],"yoast_head":"\n