"The Jesus being crucified in John's Gospel is always in control. He is unafraid, shows no weaknesses, carries his own cross, dies in serenity, and is buried like a king(with a staggering amount of aloes, wrapped in clothes saturated with aromatic oils.)"
"Every time we do not recognize the power of God in the one who is being crucified we are renouncing our own messianic hope and admitting that the powers of this world are, for us, the deepest reality."
"For John, Jesus' death is the birth of something new in our lives."
"What John wants to say with this image is that those who witnessed the death of Jesus immediately recognized too that the kind of love which Jesus manifested in dying in this way created a new energy and freedom in their own lives."
"They felt both the energy and a cleansing, blood and water, flowing from Jesus' death."
"In essence, they felt a power flowing out of his death into their lives that allowed them to live with less fear, with less guilt, with more joy, and with more meaning. That is still true for us today."
"John's Passion account puts us all on trial and renders a verdict that frees us from our deepest bondage."
"As Christians, we believe that we bear the image and likeness of God inside of us and this is our deepest reality."
"We are made in God's image."
"However we tend to picture this in a naive, rtomantic, and pious way. We imagine that somewhere inside us there is a beautiful icon of God stamped into our souls. That may well be, but God, as scriptures assures us, is more than an icon. Gid is fire - wild, infinite, ineffable, non-containable."
The text is from the Good Friday Service homily celebrated at the Marianist Residence at Founder's Hollow.
