Fr. William Horo
The Christian world celebrated Good Friday this year on April 15 with enthusiasm. On this day, the Christian world commemorates the death of Jesus on the cross. (Jn. 19: 30) The faithful come out on the streets or the public squares in the afternoon of the day and enact with religious fervour the Execution of Jesus on the cross. Before his crucifixion, the executors made him walk to Calvary carrying his cross on his shoulders. (Jn. 19: 17) The followers of Jesus make a symbolic journey to the Mount Calvary along with him on the Good Friday and express their solidarity in his suffering and death. They venerate the cross of Jesus, the sacrificial lamb, (Jn. 1: 29) who gave His Life as a ransom for many. (Mt. 20: 27)
Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate, the Fifth Governor of the Roman province of Judea, under Emperor Tiberius. As a Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate was granted the power of a supreme judge. He had the sole authority to order a criminal's execution. He convicted Jesus of treason though he was found not guilty. Examining him on the charge of treason the Pilate asked Jesus in his court, "Are you the king of the Jews?" To that, Jesus replied, "You say so." (Lk. 23: 3) Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, "I find no basis for an accusation against this man." (Lk. 23: 4) And when the riot was beginning, the governor took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves." (Mt. 27: 24)
According to the custom of the time, the governor had to release a prisoner on the eve of the Jewish Passover feast. The governor wanted to release Jesus and asked the people, "Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?" (Mt. 27: 17) At his birth itself, the angel had declared him the Messiah. On his very birthday the angel said to the shepherd, "Today in the city of David a Saviour, the Lord Messiah has been born for you." Jesus Barabbas was a notorious prisoner. The crowd, persuaded by the chief priests and the elders, preferred Barabbas to the Messiah and shouted, "Let Jesus be crucified." (Mt. 27: 22) The governor asked them again, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Let him be crucified." (Mt. 27: 23) When Pilate saw that he could do nothing, he released Barabbas for them and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.
The soldiers of the governor took Jesus the Messiah into the governor's headquarters and gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped off his garments and scourged him the whole night. Later in the night they put a scarlet robe on him, placed a crown of thorns on his head and mocked him saying, "Hail, King of the Jews." (Mt. 27: 29) The soldiers spat on him and humiliated him; stripped him of the scarlet robe they had put on him and put his clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. They made him carry his cross, the means of his execution in the Roman Empire. And when they had come to a place called Golgotha (which means a place of Skull), they crucified him. Over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews." (Mt. 27: 37)
However, the real cause of Jesus' Execution was not political at all but a religious one. He was dragged into it by the religious leaders of his society. Jesus was a Jew by birth. The Jewish religious leaders could not digest his teachings for he was teaching with authority. (Mk. 1: 22) They had become zero in front of him. Even the temple police who were sent by the chief priests and Pharisees to arrest him came back empty-handed and confessed, "Never has anyone spoken like him." (Jn. 7: 46) So the Sanhedrin, an elite council of priestly and lay elders of Judaism got him arrested and handed over to the Roman. They accused him of various offences which were mostly religious, such as; violating the Sabbath, (Lk. 13: 14) threatening to destroy the Jewish temple (Mt. 26:61; Jn. 2: 19), practising sorcery and exorcising people by the power of demons (Lk.11:15) and Claiming to be Messiah. (Lk.11:20) Finally, they dragged him to the Pilate, the governor of Roman Judea, to be tried for claiming to be the king of the Jews.
The Christians commemorate the death of Jesus as Good Friday not because he was killed for treason. They celebrate the Good Friday because Jesus became the Lamb of God and took away their sins (Jn. 1: 29) with his sacrifice on the cross. (Heb. 9: 28) As the Psalmist says, "No man can buy his ransom or pay a price to God for his life." (Ps. 49: 7) The ransom of the man's soul is beyond him. "But God will ransom me from death and take my soul to himself," the Psalmist continues. (Ps. 49: 15) And for that purpose, God incarnated and became man, and was born of a woman. (Gal. 4: 4) He was named Jesus, the Messiah. (Lk. 2: 21) During his interrogation in the Pilate's court Jesus had confirmed, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews." (Jn. 18:36)
Jesus is the fulfilment of all prophecies and prefigures in the Old Testament of the Bible. The prophet Isaiah, who lived some 800 years before Jesus, had said that Jesus would be "like a lamb that is led to be slaughtered." (Is. 53:7) And that is what happened on Good Friday. "He gave the governor no answer, not even to a single charge, so the governor was greatly amazed. (Mt. 27: 14) Again he was prefigured by the Passover lamb of the Jews. It was the blood of the lamb that freed the Jewish people from the slavery of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. On the night the king Pharaoh ordered them to leave his country, Egypt, every Jewish family had killed a lamb as told by their leader, Moses and sprinkled its blood on their doorposts and that had spared them from death.
Seeing the blood the angel of God of the Bible had not entered the houses of Israelites and spared their firstborn but every firstborn of the Egyptians was struck down. (Ex. 12: 29) There was great mourning and wailing among the Egyptians. That was the final plague God sent against Pharaoh and that let him release the Israelites from his slavery. (Ex. 11: 1) Thereafter, every year on the eve of their exodus every Jewish family sacrificed an unblemished a year-old lamb in the temple of Jerusalem. And because Jesus knew no sin (2Cor. 5: 21), the true unblemished lamb was crucified and killed on the same day, became the true sacrificial lamb (1 Cor.5: 7), prefigured in Exodus, one of the first five books of the Bible.
The Passover lamb of the Jews freed them from the earthly slavery of the Egyptians but Jesus the true Lamb of God frees his followers from the spiritual slavery of sin and death. (Rom. 8: 2) Just as the Passover lamb's applied blood caused the destroyer to pass over each household, Jesus' blood causes God's judgment to pass over sinners and gives life to the believers. (Rom. 6: 23) And as the first Passover was to be held in remembrance as an annual feast, so the Christians are to memorialize the Lord's death in communion until He returns. (1Cor. 11: 26) Thus it is for their spiritual well being that the Christians keep the Good Friday. With much fervour and devotion, they commemorate the 'Way of the Cross of Jesus and His death on the cross. They also venerate the Cross of Jesus on that day.
Jesus was in the form of God but he emptied himself and had taken the form of a man. (Phil. 2: 6-8) As a man, he died on the cross but as God, he rose from the dead on the third day, i.e. on Sunday, the first day of the week. (Lk. 24: 1) The followers of Jesus Christ all over the world celebrate it as Easter Sunday, the feast day of Jesus' resurrection. Jesus has conquered death; he is the Death Conqueror. The 'Good Friday' is meaningful only because of Easter Sunday. Saint Paul, a converted Pharisee to Christianity from Judaism says that death has been swallowed up in victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. (1cor. 15: 54-56) "Through him, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all the things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." (Col. 1: 20) Thus the 'Good Friday' is a salvific event and the cross is a symbol of life eternal.