Good Friday

‘It is accomplished.’ Having said this, Our Lord gave up His Spirit to His Father. Thus He returned to the One who had sent Him into the world to be our Redeemer. The hour for which He had prepared Himself throughout his life on earth, had now been fulfilled.

There is something that we should know about this word, this one word which Our Lord utters at the extremity of His life, at the very moment of death. First, it is only St John who tells us this word – St John who himself ‘saw these things’, and who personally guarantees their trustworthiness. St John wrote his Gospel in Greek, and in Greek there is just one word meaning ‘it is accomplished’: ‘tetelestai'. We can also translate this in English in several ways: ‘it is accomplished, it is finished, or, better still, it is perfected.’ Now I want to remind you of the beginning of last night’s Gospel, when John told us that Jesus had always loved His own in the world, and now He wanted to show how perfect His love was. The Supper was the means He chose to show how ‘perfect His love was’, where the word ‘perfect’ is in Greek the same word, ‘teloV’, which means ‘end’. Hence, according to another translation of St John, at the Last Supper Jesus ‘loved them to the end.’ Now ‘telos’ does not only mean ‘end’ in the sense we often use it in English, the conclusion of a series of events, closure, finality. It means ‘end’ in the sense of ‘purpose’, the fulfilment or completion of that for which a certain thing has begun.

The Last Supper was the ‘end’ of Jesus’s love, not in the sense that His love was now over and done with, but in the sense that it encapsulated the very purpose for which He had lived in the world. Think of it, - the Last Supper was not just a final meal with friends, it was the culmination of all that He had done in the way of signs of His true identity and of His infinite love for us. Yet even so, as we learned last night, the Supper was not even on its own the end, because without the cross it would have no completion, no fulfilment. The Last Supper in which He gave us His Body and Blood sacramentally, would not have been the beginning of the Mass had He not given up His Body and Blood sacrificially for us on this day. For, as I said last night, the Supper and the Cross are one. Today sees the fulfilment, the accomplishment, of what He gave us at the Supper.

Yet there is also another sense of ‘telos’, as a bringing something to perfection. In today’s second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews it was said that ‘Although He was Son, Jesus learned to obey through suffering; but having been made perfect, He became for all who obey Him the source of eternal salvation.’

In the Old Testament, the word ‘made perfect’ was used of priests being consecrated for their sacred duties, that is, to be mediators between God and man, by offering sacrifices to God. Well, that sense is surely contained deep within that word of our Lord’s, ‘it is fulfilled’, ‘tetelestai’.  His telos, the end or perfection He has now achieved at the end of His sufferings is the perfection of His priesthood. Now His Sacrifice is complete, and now the Church can begin to celebrate it after the manner He has instituted for us at the Last Supper – in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Truly at that moment on the cross, at the end of all His sufferings, death perfects His priesthood. That is the meaning of that other scene which John especially emphasises: the piercing of our Lord’s side, from which pours Blood and Water. We should see in this outpouring of the last drops of Christ’s blood the sign of the perfection of His love. He did not need to shed more than a single drop as a perfect sacrifice, had that been all He wanted to achieve. But He wanted to show yet more, His love for all of us to the end, to completion, to perfection. God the Father does not demand a cruel fate for His Son out of anger, but that His Son should show in this way how complete, how total, how perfect is His love, and how it transforms us in the sacraments, fruit of His priesthood. In this spirit we will soon behold the cross, the instrument of Christ’s telos, His ‘tetelestai’, by which He has accomplished His perfection as our Priest, King and Redeemer unveiled before us. Come, let us adore such a great sign, such a marvellous instrument, by which Christ has fulfilled and brought to completion and perfection His work for us.