Good Friday, April 18, 2025

John 18, 1 — 19, 42

St. John’s account of the Passion of our Lord emphasizes how Jesus stood out from all the people around him in his majesty and power.  Jesus is shown going deliberately to the place where he knew he would be betrayed.  Those armed with clubs and swords fall before the Lord as they approach him.  Jesus heals the slave of the high priest in the middle of his arrest by that high priest’s Temple guards.  He commands Peter to put up his sword and allows himself to be taken to the Sanhedrin.  It is Jesus who is in control of the situation at his interrogation by Annas.  He is not cowed by the guard’s blow.  He turns his questioning by Pilate into the questioning of Pilate, reducing Pilate to asking himself a philosophical question: “What is the truth?”  Pilate is convinced of the Lord’s innocence and orders him to be crucified only due to the threat of violence by the Jews.  Jesus is the master of the situation even on the Cross, giving his Mother into the care of the Apostle John.  Even his words, “I thirst”, are uttered as a command.  And then his final words, “It is consummated”, show that he has accomplished the mission for which his Father sent him.  The fact that he had the strength to speak as he did demonstrates superhuman strength.  He does only because he wills it: “I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized. And how am I straitened until it be accomplished?” (Luke 12, 50).

On this day in which we look upon the suffering of our Lord, we see how much he loves us that we would give himself up to the horrific death of the cross.  He shows that there is nothing he would not do for us to save us from hell.  He enters into death into to slay it from the inside.