Why is it "Good" Friday?: Good Friday

Listen to the homily here.

Notes:

We have more than 7 billion people on our planet

·      And by 2200, none of these will be alive

·      How many people in our history (50,000 years ago) have died

·      107 billion people!

·      94% of humans have died

The fact is, each of us will die

·      Whether natural causes, heart disease, cancer, accidents, strokes, etc. we will be gone here on earth

·      God has the ace in the hole…death

But let us think about one individual…one person out of 114 billion people, who did conquered death: Jesus Christ

·      And he didn’t do so wanting his own immortality

·      He did so to save us

And he didn’t do it in a peaceful death

·      He did so through crucifixion, one of the most brutal death

·      And he did for us

o   Isaiah: “Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.”

o   Hebrews: “In the days when Christ was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.”

o   Luke 23:46: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

If the story through our Triduum, the Bible, our history, was closed with death, this story would be brutal

·      Praise God, we each have another chapter

·      John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

And thank you, Jesus Christ, our King, our friend, our brother, our shepherd:

·      You did defeat death

·      You did destroy evil

·      You did open the gates to heaven

·      And this is why we call this Good Friday