On this Good Friday, there is much goodness for which we can give thanks. This is the only day of the year in which the Church does not celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass, but rather the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion. And though the Eucharist is not celebrated in the same way as it is on the other 364 days of the year, I think that precisely for this reason the agapic (sacrificial love) dimension of the Eucharist emerges today with greater force. We do not officially reserve or adore the Sacred Species today, there is no consecration because we do not celebrate the Mass but rather venerate the Cross; but we are invited to become living tabernacles ourselves in today’s liturgy when we receive Jesus’ Body in Holy Communion. The seeming absence of the Blessed Sacrament in our Churches today reminds us of the urgency of Jesus’ imperative: “Love one another.” We are to become “Eucharist” for one another today, and every day. I am to give thanks for my brother, for my sister who ‘consume’ me; for my community for whom I am poured out; for my family for whom I am emptied; for my friends for whom Jesus invites me to lay down my life. Yes, I am to give thanks, I am to rejoice in the mystery and in the scandal of the Cross; I am to glory in the fact that I have been prepared a body (cf. Hebrews 10:5) which is meant to be taken, blessed, broken and given, as His own body has been taken, blessed, broken and given for the salvation of the world. Jesus, we pray: may this Good Friday remind us of the goodness of this gift, of how good it truly is to live in reckless abandon and extravagant LOVE, as You have shown us this day.
Sr. Ruth
