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Good Friday, 2005: God is nailed to humanity
The moment Jesus confessed to the High Priest that he was the Son of God was the moment he guaranteed
that he would be nailed to the Cross. So many times in his public life he had slipped through hostile hands. This time, those
hands assured he would not get away. They would nail him firmly to the Cross. As a carpenter, Jesus had, with his own hands,
often driven nails into wood, to fix and secure whatever he was making. Now, as those same hands were themselves nailed to
the Cross, he would feel himself fixed forever to what his Father was making through the unsuspecting hands of sinners: he
was making all things new, immortal humanity in immortal creation. The nails speak to the eternal permanence of God’s
self-sacrificing commitment to mankind, no matter how hostile and merciless mankind might be. In a peculiar symbolism, the
nails also evoke the permanent presence of Jesus among us in the Eucharist. And, by God’s will, this would be done through
the hateful hands of sinners and the loving hands, the nailed, loving hands, of Jesus.
The hands of Jesus! The helpless hands of the infant, reaching out for the arms of Mary and of Joseph;
the awkward hands, first, of the carpenter’s apprentice, then the skilled and roughened hands of the professional joiner;
the uplifted hands in prayer to the Father in heaven; the helping hands at home, at work, at play; the reverent hands that
would hold the scrolls of the Torah; the soothing hands that would caress and comfort the dying Joseph and the mournful Mary;
the hands that would bless the children, console the bereaved, heal the blind, the lame and the leper; the hands that would
calm the storm, multiply the loaves and fish, command the devils to be gone and the dead to arise; the hands that would take
the bread, break it, and give it, and take the cup and hand it over; the hands of the Redeemer who had made the world and
fashioned man and woman from the dust of the earth: these hands were to be treated as nothing more than a useful peg with
which to pin the holy, strong and immortal One to the tree of torture. Not the Jews, not the Romans but all have driven those
sacred, life-giving hands into the Cross with the nails of our iniquities.
And yet, as only the folly-stricken love of God can know, the more and the deeper the nails penetrate,
the faster and the more abundantly does his life-giving love gush forth to forgive. For Jesus, these wounds are not his shame,
but his glory. By his doing, our nailing of him nails us to those merciful and majestic hands. We can no more escape those
hands than he the Cross. If he is transfixed, we are con-fixed with him. Our sins no longer nail him to a tree to keep him
away from us; rather, they nail him to us so that “with Christ we hang upon the Cross”; indeed, further still:
“in Christ we hang upon the Cross.” Since all men have sinned, the
nails deliver all men into the hands of the Crucified. As in the incarnation the Son of God became one with all men, so by
the nails, all sinners become one with the Savior. So much so, that in dying, Jesus dies for all sinners and all sinners die
in him. Man, like Satan, may be cunning in sinning, but the Savior is more astute still in forgiving. Disguised as a carpenter,
the divine Creator makes all things new by the nails which the Destroyer, with the connivance of sinners, hammers into his
sacred hands. And as the nails sought to fix Jesus to death, so the Resurrection fixes Jesus to eternal life. Once the sinner
nails Jesus to the Cross, Jesus nails the sinner to eternal life, if the sinner
will but expose his sinful, hammering hands to the wounded, liberating hands of the Lord.
Throughout the ages, beginning with St. Paul and as recently as Saint Padre Pio, the startling truth underlying
Christ’s life-giving wounds has been confirmed and reconfirmed in a particular way by the stigmata. Jesus remains forever
committed, permanently fixed, to the salvation of man. Permanent commitment to the point of extreme suffering is scoffed at
in our day as contrary to our rights. But, pray, what rights can we claim before the Crucified? Can we not only reciprocate
in the same way? Thankfully, in our time, we have the example of someone who does so reciprocate. I speak of our Holy Father,
Pope John Paul II.
Like Jesus, he has in his life escaped hostile hands many times. But also like Jesus, his hour has not
yet come. He had first repeatedly to travel the world over to proclaim the Gospel, welcome or unwelcome. He had to endure
hostility from the enemies of the dignity of man, endless criticism and cynicism concerning his unflinching fidelity to the
authentic tradition of the Apostles. He had to be maligned by many whose genuine interests he sought to defend. But, through
it all, the Lord, the Mighty Hero, has been at his side. The Pope has not only borne the insults, the violence, the lies and
the conspiracies. He has now also let the Lord strip him of all the things which attracted and gave prowess to what he was
and did. His physical mobility and strength are all but gone, his powerful and consoling voice is silenced, his availability
to the faithful is minimal, his visibility to humanity has faded. He has allowed Jesus to strip him to the bare essential:
a suffering and prayerful presence. None of us can know how despoiled of his beloved ministry he actually feels; nor what
spiritual agony his mystical soul must be undergoing; nor what darkness and abandonment he must be experiencing. But one thing
we do know: he is nailed to Christ and to the Church in imitation of the crucified Lord. Like the faithful presence of Christ
in the Eucharist, he is faithfully present to the Church as Peter. In the depths of his heart he clings, not to position or
fame, but to the will of the Redeemer. In their ignorance, some may perceive him as a stubborn old man: may God forgive them!
But we must see in him a spiritual stigmatist who reflects back to us the crucified Savior. In his life, John Paul II has
achieved much for the Church and for the world; but, in terms of the Gospel, his present passion and, in God’s good
time, his death may well achieve much more.
Nailed to the Church and to Christ, may the witness of the Pope inspire us, too, so to be committed to
our vocation, whatever the cost. At the eleventh station, Jesus was nailed to the Cross. In our turn, albeit at the eleventh
hour, let us open our hands wide to him, worthily and gratefully, that they may be wounded by the Eucharist we receive in
them and so be transfixed in permanent communion with our great and glorious Redeemer.
Msgr. Peter Magee, Friday, March 25th, 2005: St. Andrew Apostle,
Silver Spring – 7.30 pm
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