Legionary Fr Walter Schu shared his homily for Good Friday with me…I believe it is worth sharing with all of you. God Bless you during these holy days.
Dolor Mea—Pondus Meum
(My Suffering is My Weight)
Good Friday Homily
ICAS 2012
Christ’s Good Friday
At this moment words seem almost out of place. What we really need, what our spirit is longing for, are not words—but silence.
We need silence to gaze upon the face of the one whose look was marred beyond human semblance—the one from whom men hide their faces—spurned, and held in no esteem.
We need silence in order to ask ourselves once again, from the depths of our heart—who was this man, this man of sorrows, this man of suffering and infirmity? And why did he have to undergo all of this?
Of course, we already know the answers. But that is not enough. We need silence so that those questions, and so that the answers to those questions can resonate in a new way in our spirit, in the inner room of our conscience, that hidden place where we are alone with God, whose voice echoes in our depths.
Because today is Good Friday. It is Christ’s Good Friday. And if those questions, and the answers that the Holy Spirit insinuates to those questions in the silence of our spirit mean anything, there is only one way to live Good Friday.
We must live today in gratitude and in love. Gratitude that we have been redeemed—that Christ has transformed us from within and opened the gates of heaven—those gates which had remained irremediably closed ever since Adam’s sin.
And when we contemplate, at a complete loss for words, the price Christ had to pay in order to redeem us, that gratitude cannot help but well up into great waves of love. Waves of love that wash over our soul and cleanse and purify us and convert us once again to the one who is the center of our life: the man of sorrows, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
But Good Friday doesn’t end here. If so, it would be too easy. A little fasting, silence, some extra prayer to accompany Christ. Today is our Lord’s Good Friday. But each of us is called in love to live our own Good Fridays.
Our Own Good Fridays
And those Good Fridays might come at a moment we do not expect and in a form we never anticipated. At least that was the case for the biggest of my own personal Good Fridays.
It didn’t come when I was a novice, when everything about religious life was new, and I was too busy trying to absorb it all to have a real crisis. Nor did it happen in Salamanca during humanities. And it certainly didn’t take place during internship, when I had the joy of being the first-ever dean of studies here at ICAS—as well as bus driver.
Nor did it appear on the horizon during my years in Rome studying philosophy and theology, almost in the shadow of St. Peter’s, and with the grace of being able to serve Mass three times for now Blessed Pope John Paul II.
The most difficult moment of my vocation took place when I was already a priest. I hope you’re not curious, because I’m not going to tell you what it was. I’ll just let you know one thing: it lasted two and half years.
The older one gets, the quicker the years slip pass, so two and half might not seem like such a long time—but it is longer than the entire novitiate you’re eagerly looking forward to.
Yet those two and a half years of my own personal Good Friday, when it felt like I was permanently fallen under the weight of the cross and not sure how to get up, or when I would get up, or if I would ever even be able to get up—those two and a half years turned out to be the greatest blessing of my priesthood.
How can this be? To get an answer to that, all we have to do is look at one line from Blessed John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris, On The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.” (SD, 19)
In other words, Christ has not only redeemed us through suffering, he has transformed suffering itself from within. What is the result of that transformation? Here is one of the most beautiful paragraphs from Salvific Doloris:
“Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace. To this grace many saints, such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and others, owe their profound conversion. A result of such a conversion is not only that the individual discovers the salvific meaning of suffering but above all that he becomes a completely new person. He discovers a new dimension, as it were, of his entire life and vocation” (SD, 26)
Within the last week two different people whom I was talking with have told me almost the exact same thing: “Father, I would never think of hurting myself or doing anything drastic—but at times I suffering is so great that I wish and almost pray that I simply wouldn’t wake up in the morning.”
How can we respond to that? What words can we say? We certainly can tell them that their sufferings, united to Christ are redemptive. But what if they just look at us and go poof—and try to blow those words away as if they were as light as a feather. What is the one thing that can give weight to those words we’re called to utter so many times as a priest?
Only if we ourselves have been through suffering. Only if we ourselves have felt crushed in infirmity will our words have weight. St. Augustine once said “Amor meus, pondus meum. My love is my weight.” On this Good Friday, and with special authenticity on our own personal Good Fridays, we can also say the following: Dolor mea, pondus meum. My suffering is my weight. It is our suffering that gives depth, and strength, and firmness to our lives as priests and future priests.
Mary’s Good Friday
There is one final word that needs to be said on this Friday we call Good. It is not only Christ’s Good Friday—it is also Mary’s Good Friday.
I’m sure we all love that beautiful scene from the passion when Mary encounters her Son along the path of his Via Crucis, bruised and barely recognizable under the weight of suffering. What does Christ tell her? “Behold, I make all things new.”
United with Mary, let us pronounce with our hearts, not only today, but also during each of our own personal Good Fridays, those words the Liturgy places on our lips: “We adore you oh Christ and we praise you. Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”
If we do so, then we will also hear that soft, but insistent and powerful response of Christ from within our own suffering and the suffering of those around us: “Behold, I make all things new.”
