Ecumenical Service of Prayer around the Cross
10.30 am on Good Friday, 2 April 2010
Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate and St. Thomas of Canterbury, Northampton

  

Reflection by Bishop Peter Doyle

It is very special that we are together this morning, gathered around the cross of Our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Many of us will be involved in our own Good Friday celebrations with hardly enough time to be here. But our faltering ecumenical efforts are an essential response to the cross.

As we heard in John’s Gospel, the cross is a cross of life – “The Son of Man must be lifted up so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

It is a cross of salvation – “God sent his Son not to condemn the world but that the world may be saved through him.”

Our celebrations of the Lord’s Supper last evening and our Easter Sunday celebrations only make sense in the light of this cross of life, this cross of salvation. The gift of the Eucharist at the Last Supper flows from the cross – “This is my body given for you” – “This is the cup of my blood poured out for you.” The gift of the priesthood, too, perpetuates Christ’s sacrifice and mission – “Do this in memory of me.” The example of service, the washing of feet, finds its full meaning in the total self-giving of Jesus on the cross.

Yet that which is life-giving and saving is ecumenically fraught – the sacrament of union is in reality a sign of disunity and of a lack of communion. As we look upon the cross we must seek the primacy of loving service towards one another.

For we are the Church born out of the side of Christ on the cross as his side was pierced with a lance. The early Church Fathers, like St. John Chrysostom, interpreted the blood and water flowing from the side of Christ as symbolizing Baptism and the mysteries of our faith. St. John Chrysostom wrote, “It is by these two that the holy Church was born by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit (by Baptism and the mysteries, the Sacraments). It is from his side that Christ formed the Church as from the side of Adam he formed Eve.”

There is symbolic language connecting us intimately with the cross of Jesus Christ.

In the reading from the letter to the Hebrews, we are invited to let go of our burdens and our sins, and persevere in our journey of faith in Jesus, and not grow weary or fainthearted. It is a call to live in the light of truth, to be humble before the cross. How much some of us have to live that humility.

So, what of ourselves individually? Do we run to the cross or run away from it? There are times when I want to switch off the agony of the cross, to run away from the suffering caused by my sins. But where can I run? I can only run to the foot of the cross. During these days the words of the hymn have been in my mind:

 

   My song is love unknown,
   My Saviour’s love to me.
   Love to the loveless shown
   That they might lovely be.
   O, who am I, that for my sake
   My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

 

However dark our situation, however bad we think we are, the love of the cross, a love unknown, conquers all. Our service together is to accept that love for ourselves, to live that love, and to witness to it flowing from the cross.

 

As we shall sing at the end of our service:

 

   How deep the Father’s love for us
   How vast beyond all measure
   That he should give his only Son
   To make a wretch his treasure.