April 18, 2025

Concluding Reflection on Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica: The Jubilee of Hope and Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, April 18, 2025

3 minutes

Msgr. Roger J. Landry

Meditations for the Seven Last Words of Jesus

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City

Good Friday 2025

April 18, 2025

To watch a video of this word, please click below:

To listen to an audio recording of the homily based on this word, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.18.25_Conclusion_of_the_Seven_Last_Words_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:

After Jesus shouted his last word of entrustment to the Father, the Cross fell silent.

Jesus’ body continued to speak and give, as his side and heart were pierced with a soldier’s lance and out flowed blood and water, a sign of baptism and the Eucharist, the font of sacramental life in the Church.

Nature created by Jesus also began to speak. The earth quaked, rocks were split and tombs were opened.

The house of God began to speak as the curtain in the holy of holies in the temple was torn from top to bottom.

Spectators began to speak, like a centurion, who observing Jesus’ words and actions and the revulsions taking place in nature, cried out, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

Silent were the words of the apostles. The Shepherd was struck and the sheep were scattered. They soon eventually reconvened fearfully in the Upper Room behind locked doors, using it as a hideaway rather than as a place to do what Jesus the previous night had told them to do in his memory and rather than as a launch pad for mission.

Mary, however, continued to stand by the Cross of her Son confident in hope of how this was not the end, but the prelude to the greatest revolution of all time, about to erupt 40 hours later. With help from others, like Joseph of Arimathea, who had gone to Pilate to ask for Jesus’ body, Mary would be present as Jesus bloody, scourged, thorn-crowned and crucified body was taken down from the Cross and placed in her arms. She had so many times when he was an infant held him in her arms as he slept. Now she held him anew, asleep once more in expectation of the fulfillment of his promises.

Here in St. Patrick’s, behind the sanctuary, there is a resplendent marble pietà, not as famous as that done by a 25-year-old Michelangelo, but a masterpiece nonetheless. Sculpted in 1906 by William Ordray Partridge, Jesus is not horizontal across Mary’s lap, but place vertically between her legs with his own limp legs bent as a pair on the ground, his back leaning against her right leg, and his left arm resting on her left thigh. Mary holds in her left hand her Son’s glorious scarred left hand and with her right hand she lovingly takes her Son’s head and tilts it back so that she can she can his face as she caresses with maternal love his beard. It is an expression of reverence and awe for what Jesus has done. Mary shows her love for his sacred body not just as a mother but as a Christian, a preparation for the way we are meant to treat him whenever we receive him in Holy Communion, as Jesus, risen from the dead, entrusts himself to each of us. With similar love she would supervise as Joseph and Nicodemus and the women prepared Jesus’ body for burial. As Mary put the loving final touches on the linen shroud wrapping Jesus’ body and burial clothes wrapping his dead, she doubtless was preparing inwardly for what would occur on the third day.

What happened to the Cross? After Jesus’ body was taken down, it was forsaken by the Christians as the awful instrument that brought about his death. It was eventually thrown into a cavern underneath the limestone skull-shaped hill, enclosed in a pagan temple by the emperor Hadrian and finally rediscovered by St. Helen after the legalization of Christianity. It began an instrument of miracles. It became a means of faith. It became a reminder of the great victory of Christ. And now is enshrined in the Church built over St. Helen’s old house — Rome’s Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem — and shared in various reliquaries across the globe. That Cross remains an eloquent sign and means of hope because of what Christ accomplished on it. It’s a message of hope that never expires.

One of the classic hymns sung for centuries on this day is the Pange Lingua Gloriosi Proelum Certaminis,” “Sing my tongue the Glorious Battle.” The eighth of ten verses contain the hymns most famous words. They’re words of praise for the Cross on which hung the Savior of the World, the Cross that symbolically each of us will have the chance to venerate at the Passion Service that will begin at 330. “Crux fidelis,” we sing, “inter omnes arbor una nobilis.” In John Neale’s beautiful translation, we pray, “Faithful cross, true sign of triumph, Be for all the noblest tree; None in foliage, none in blossom, None in fruit thine equal be; Symbol of the world’s redemption, For the weight that hung on thee!” The Cross is indeed the noblest tree of all time, an instrument of death, which became the tree of life, an instrument of torture that became mankind’s greatest source of blessing. Cicero had called crucifixion, “a nefarious action such as that is incapable of description by any word, for there is none fit to describe it.” But Christ turned that nefarious action incapable of description into a saving, grace-filled deep that, while still ineffable, has inspired poets, and hymn writers and mystics ever since.

Beholding the Cross anew, now bereft of its most sacred fruit of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus, we ask for the grace to follow Jesus by putting our own body there, taking up our Cross every day. To hail the Cross as indeed our only hope and to be ready always and everywhere, but especially today, to give an explanation of the reason of our hope to anyone and every who asks. This Christian hope was validated at dawn on the third day when the seemingly impossible happened and the Crucified Carpenter, as the Word of God who has spoken these seven words to us, rose from the dead, as the Resurrection and the Life burst from the tomb, as the Light of the World irradiated the darkness that had covered the planet on Good Friday and had remained unabated until dawn on the first day of the week. That resurrection shows that Christian hope is not wishful thinking, is not in vain, does not disappoint, but is a confidence, a trust, that all God has promised will indeed come true, that right now God is with us, and wants to fulfill his work in us and bring us to fulfillment of our great hope of which Jesus’ resurrection is the foretaste, and in the meantime make us his instruments to complete his saving work in the world.

What is that work? As we’re about to sing. It’s to lift high this Cross, proclaiming the love of God it displays, until all the world proclaims the Savior’s name! Ave O Crux spes unica! Amen!

The post Concluding Reflection on Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica: The Jubilee of Hope and Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, April 18, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

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By Father Roger Landry

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April 18, 2025

Concluding Reflection on Ave, O Crux, Spes Unica: The Jubilee of Hope and Jesus’ Seven Last Words from the Cross, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, April 18, 2025

3 minutes

Msgr. Roger J. Landry

Meditations for the Seven Last Words of Jesus

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City

Good Friday 2025

April 18, 2025

To watch a video of this word, please click below:

To listen to an audio recording of the homily based on this word, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/4.18.25_Conclusion_of_the_Seven_Last_Words_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:

After Jesus shouted his last word of entrustment to the Father, the Cross fell silent.

Nature created by Jesus also began to speak. The earth quaked, rocks were split and tombs were opened.

The house of God began to speak as the curtain in the holy of holies in the temple was torn from top to bottom.

Spectators began to speak, like a centurion, who observing Jesus’ words and actions and the revulsions taking place in nature, cried out, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

What is that work? As we’re about to sing. It’s to lift high this Cross, proclaiming the love of God it displays, until all the world proclaims the Savior’s name! Ave O Crux spes unica! Amen!

...more