On this day the Church lives the Pascha Crucifixionis of her Lord. In the solemn story of the Passion according to John, it commemorates the immense love of God; and with the adoration of the cross it commemorates gratefully her origin from the side of Christ. Jesus dies on the cross, a very cruel and horrible torture, as Cicero tells us, and he dies, according to the Jewish religious culture of the time as one cursed by God (cf. Deut 21:23). Jesus therefore does not die as a martyr but in infamy, suspended between heaven and earth, and as if the heaven and earth refused, in that tragic and saving hour of history, to welcome him; he dies in shame, counted among the evildoers. Yet, in faith, his Passion is an epiphany of God’s glory, the testimony of a love that hatred could not destroy nor sin annihilate. John rereads the Passion as the hour of the glorification (manifestation) of the Son of God. We have the theme as a foundation of exaltation, developed in the first part of the Gospel (cf. Jn 3,14; 8,28; 12,32), and that of the return of Jesus to the Father (cf. Jn 13:1). What emerges is the sovereign freedom of Christ; it is he who leads the events, from moment of arrest up to the last moments of his life. To those who wanted to capture him, he manifests his authority. Before the leaders of the Jews and Pilate he does not accept the role of defendant but claims his own divine kingship. In the end, he is always the one to carry the cross and to deliver, to the beloved Disciple, the image of the Nascent Church, Mary, the Mother. The final act of his death seals the completion of the work entrusted to him by the Father. By celebrating this day, the Church does not revoke the anniversary of a past event but prolongs it and brings about in the faithful the mystery of Jesus’ death.

I thirst.
What! Are you asking water from me,
Lord,
from me, a leaky cistern
in arid country?
You will obtain nothing,
You, God Omnipotent,
If you do not first
drink my thirst
right to the point of dying parched.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Santa Maria – Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey