Good Friday, the day on which we solemnly celebrate the Passion, suffering and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, can seem daunting, depressing, even terrifying at first sight.

Julian of Norwich experienced a vision of the crucified Christ. In her book, ‘Revelations of Divine Love’, she relates in detail how, in the eighth revelation, she saw Christ dying on the cross, and Our Lady standing below the cross, united with him in his love and pain. Yet, at the very moment she thinks He is about to die, Jesus’ expression changes from that of pain, suffering and agony to one which gives Julian great joy. This leads into the ninth revelation, in which Jesus tells her, ‘It is a joy, a bliss, an endless delight to me that I ever suffered my Passion for you.’

So, it is possible, and indeed necessary, to see Jesus’ death on the cross as a creative act. In St John’s Passion account, which we hear read today, Jesus, in his last moments, looks at his mother and the disciple he loves who are standing near the cross.

He said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the
disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to
his own home. (John 19:26b-27; ESV)

Here, we are witnessing the creation of the first Christian community, as the disciple, believed by many to be St John, takes Our Lady to be his own mother, and brings her into his own home.

Now Jesus declares that He is thirsty: ‘I thirst’. It is not only a physical, bodily, thirst that Jesus is experiencing here, but a spiritual thirst for the souls of all of us, of those He is dying to save. St Teresa of Calcutta was deeply touched by this thirst, and crucifixes in the chapels of the Missionaries of Charity have the words ‘I thirst’ emblazoned beside them on the wall. If you want to hear about Jesus’ love for you, I commend to you this meditation drawn from her writings, available as both a text and a video:

I Thirst — Missionaries of Charity Fathers

The evangelist then relates that Jesus ‘gives up His spirit’. This must be seen not as the faltering last breath of a weakened, dying man, but as a powerful outbreathing of the lifegiving spirit. The San Damiano icon of the crucifix in Assisi shows Jesus with a large, sturdy neck, indicating his ability to breathe out and bequeath this spirit, and then, at the moment He chooses, our Saviour gives up His spirit and passes from this mortal life.

When the soldiers come to take His body from the cross, one of them pierces His side with a spear or a lance, and blood and water flow out. This is the moment at which the Church comes into being. As Lumen Gentium states:

‘This inauguration and this growth [of the Church] are both symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of a crucified Jesus.’

It is by his act of total self-giving that Jesus not only brings about for us our salvation as individuals, but also brings into existence that spiritual body into which we will be incorporated, as St Peter writes in his first Letter:

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:4–5 (ESV)

The crucifixion is a creative act.

Artwork by Dame Werburg Welch OSB (1894-1990)