Jesus' Valedictory

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 25, 2005

No greater homily has ever been given than the one Jesus preaches today, nailed to his perpendicular pulpit.

It consists of a mere seven sentences, spread over the span of three cold and dark hours. For Jesus to have spoken at all shows how important he considered every word. The human person speaks during exhalation, and for a crucified man to talk, he has to thrust himself upward by his legs to open his lungs sufficiently to exhale. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been immensely painful, but for someone like Jesus with nails through the nerves of his feet, such an action would have also sent piercing bolts racing through his beaten body. Not only was he suffering while he said these words, but he was suffering anew precisely in order to say these words.

Well before the Roman soldier had pierced his heart with a lance to let forth a torrent of blood and water, Jesus himself revealed its contents through his scabbed and parched lips. And in them, Jesus, like any great orator and teacher, summarized the most important parts of what he had spent his life trying to communicate.

The first word came when he was being hammered to his cruciform podium. While others would have naturally cried out in agony, Jesus cried, rather, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" These words of mercy were invoked not just for his executioners and mockers, but for everyone who has ever sinned. Little did his executioners realize they were killing the God-man; little have we known that by our sins we were doing the same. But in the midst of suffering the worst sin of all, Jesus was begging forgiveness for us all. The "friend of tax collectors and sinners" was a faithful friend to all such sinners to the end.

His second word was to one sinner in particular who, in the midst of his own pain, recognized Jesus not as a fellow crucified criminal about to die, but as a king about to conquer and reign. After defending Jesus, he didn't ask to be saved from death, only to be remembered. And Jesus responded with words that have never been forgotten: "Today I tell you: you will be with me in paradise." The good thief knocked and the door of heaven was opened, and the Good Shepherd arrived in verdant pastures with one of his lost sheep.

His third word was to saints. Jesus had come from heaven to found a new family. That family already had a father, but needed a mother. In a second annunciation, Jesus declared to Mary that she was to become a mother again: "Woman behold your son!" Then he turned to his beloved disciple and said, "Behold your mother." The new "mother of all the living," Mary repeated her "fiat!" and has ever since helped John and her other spiritual children to say the same.

In the fourth word, Jesus shows how he was fulfilling all the Old Testament prophecies. In the words of Psalm 22, he turned to his Father and prayed: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This psalm had predicted that he would be mocked and encircled by evildoers, that others would cast lots for his clothing, and that he would be able to count all his bones. But that is just a prelude to a message of great hope: that he would live in God and even those who "sleep in the earth" would bow before God. Despite contrary perceptions, God was shouting that God had never abandoned his beloved children and would call them back to life!

In the fifth word, he fulfilled Psalm 69, which foretold that he would be thirsty and given vinegar to drink. He who had created all the water in the world nevertheless clamored "I thirst!." As with the time he asked the Samaritan woman for a drink, however, his thirst was to give us himself as "living water," to quench our thirsts and desires forever.

That fifth word leads to the sixth. Scripture scholars say that the wine mixed with gall given to Jesus constituted the fourth cup of the Jewish Passover rite, which brought to completion what Jesus had begun at the Last Supper the night before. As the new paschal victim, the Lamb of God, was giving his body and shedding his blood to inaugurate the new and eternal covenant, he cried out in triumph "it is finished!"

His mission successfully accomplished, he could now turn to his heavenly Father and in his last word put an exclamation point on the infinite trust that characterized his entire life: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!"

Jesus had strained to speak these words aloud so that we could know what was in his heart as that heart was about to beat its last. He proclaimed them so that we could hear them and base our lives on them.

Today their power and eloquence echo unabated in the contrite, contemplative hearts of his faithful followers.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.