 |
|
Special Devotions
Lent and Holy Week Meditations
Good Friday
Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Tomorrow is Good Friday a day of very special graces. Each Church feast day
is accompanied by an effusion of graces that corresponds to the graces the saint received or to the mysteries of the lives of Our Lady or Our Lord that the feast commemorates.
The skies of Jerusalem darkened at the moment of Christ's death | |
Tomorrow we will consider the mystery of mysteries, the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Redemption of mankind. According to a venerable tradition, He died at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Therefore, at that time the Redemption was realized. Our Lord spoke the words, consummatum est, it is finished, and then His Soul left His most holy Body. When He died, the Victim expired, the Sacrifice was made and the Redemption was accomplished. The human genre, which before that hour was lost, thenceforth received the offer of salvation. At that moment, also, the skies darkened, the earth shook and God’s wrath was manifested upon humankind.
With this, we were rescued, and tomorrow we can contemplate Our Lord Jesus Christ as the fountain of all graces which opened to us because of His Sacrifice. We can consider that His Sacrifice opened such a torrent of mercy that is truly infinite. We can expect every kind of forgiveness insofar as we are open to receive these graces.
Four meditations
In my opinion the most expressive aspects of Good Friday to contemplate are these four:
First, Our Lord Jesus Christ expiring on the Cross, His death.
Our Lord pierced with the lance - Rubens | |
Second, Our Lord’s Heart pierced by the lance of Longinus, the iron pierces the very symbol of love. In this act the furor of His persecutors reached its apex. Although there are interpreters who sustain that this act was made by the Roman soldier to shorten His agony – a kind of euthanasia – we know that it was the furor of His persecutors that had placed Him in such a situation, where even His Sacred Heart was pierced. With this, the last of His Precious Blood along with a drop of water poured out for us. It indicates His extreme mercy, goodness and consideration for us.
Third, Our Lord, bloodless, lying on the lap of Our Lady, the well-known scene of the Pieta, Our Lady of Piety. It represents her great piety, the great pity she had for Him, and the great sorrow she felt because of Him. In parallel to her piety, we can consider the tremendous and admirable solitude of Our Lady that began at that moment. She became Our Lady of Solitude, almost without friends. She had St. John Evangelist as a son, it is true. But even knowing that he was very good, what a difference between this son and the Son of sons who had died!
Fourth, Our Lord pallid and without life is left inside the Sepulcher, all alone.
The graces we can ask for
Tomorrow we can meditate on these various aspects of the death of Our Lord and ask for a special grace on each one. What grace should we ask for in each contemplation?
Our Lord expires on the Cross
| |
Considering Our Lord expiring, we can ask for the grace to be converted in those parts of our souls that still need to change in order to make us entirely like unto Our Lord. There is always something inside of us that needs to be converted until we reach sanctity. In view of His Sacrifice that ended in His death; in view of His mercy obtained at the price of His infinitely precious Blood, we can ask and expect the grace of a complete conversion. Let us beg, through the intercession of Our Lady, that Our Lord penetrate our souls and destroy all our resistance to His grace, that He shake us and convert us in order to make us ascend in our spiritual lives.
Meditating on Our Lord’s pierced Heart, we should recall His love for us. In face of His infinite affection for us, we should ask Him to make us progress at the very heart of our spiritual life, which is our counter-revolutionary life. We are not only called to save our own souls, but we are called to destroy the Revolution and save the Church from the enormous progressivist infiltration she is suffering. Our love for Him would not be complete if we were only concerned about our individual spiritual progress. We should show Him our love by destroying the enemies of His Mystical Body. So, this is an important grace to pray for.
Considering Our Lord lying on the lap of Our Lady, thinking of her piety and her sorrow, we should ask them both to help us understand the Passion of Our Lord as she did as she contemplated Him there. Many people meditate on the Passion as a past event without any relation to their immediate lives. On the contrary, we should have it always before our eyes.
Our Lady of Piety | |
In the Stations of the Cross we pray: Impress on our souls the wounds of Christ. This means: Give us solidarity with the Passion of Christ in such a way that His sorrows become our sorrows, and that we live having His Passion before our eyes. The way to do this is to think about the Catholic Church. Today she is passing through a Passion similar to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We should ask the grace of transcending the sphere of our little lives, our small individual interests, in order to live always having before our eyes the Passion of Holy Mother Church.
Contemplating Christ in the Sepulcher, we can recall His death and His Resurrection. On many occasions, the Church has appeared to be dead, but she, different than Him, never dies. In this sense, she is not able to resurrect, but rather she always re-emerges from her humiliations and defeats. Even as greatly humiliated and desecrated as she is today, doubtless she will resurrect from this situation, destroy the reign of the Revolution and establish the Reign of Mary. Let us ask Our Lady that we always hope and believe in this new Easter that will come.
These are the considerations we can make and graces we can ask for tomorrow on Good Friday.
This meditation by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira was summarized
and adapted based on notes taken by Atila S. Guimarães
Related Topics of Interest
Our Lord Taken Prisoner
La Macarena, Our Hope - Holy Week in Seville
The Reproaches of the Passion - I
The Reproaches of the Passion - II
The Reproaches of the Passion - III
The Meaning of the Three Falls of Our Lord
The Love of the Cross in Today’s Life
How Should We Follow the Passion of the Catholic Church?
The Seven Last Words on the Cross
The Symbol of the Chalice in the Garden of Olives
The Fidelity of the Remnant throughout History
Related Works of Interest
|
Special Devotions | Religious | Home | Books | Tapes | Search | Contact Us
©2002-2007 Tradition in Action, Inc. All Rights Reserved
|
|
|