GOOD FRIDAY

2005

Last night we embarked on a journey

a wild and unpredictable journey.

Tonight we attempt to appreciate that: part of any journey is painful. Why?

Parenting –

The mother that worries about her son

The Father who longs to be confided in

The parent who wants to fix and the young adult who wants to do it all by themselves

and in their own time.

Feelings of emptiness and abandonment.

I remember many times when I disappointed my mother

and she would echoe these words.

Norman,

(when she calls me Norman I am in trouble, it’s like she’s calling me back to the womb.)

you’ll never understand what you do to me, until you have children of your own.

She has the Irish Catholic quilt thing down to an art form.

You’ll never understand what you do to me, until you have children of your own.

It’s taken me a while to understand her words.

Yeah, I got the concept, but the feelings are very different than a concept.

I have some children now, actually a lot.

(Some timely examples were given)

I have the child who won’t help themselves and I can’t make them.

I have the sons and daughters who don’t want to burden or bother father

with their problems.

I have the daughters and sons, and they are not teenagers,

who like to protect me

and therefore choose not to tell me things.  

The concept is very different than the feeling.

God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son, so that we might have life.

Would you – a parent

– be willing to give that all up?

Those relationships in our lives for another.

Can we make that sacrifice?

We don’t have to – He did.

It’s painful stuff, but of anything you want to be involved the life of your child.

All I ask is that you talk to me.

In many ways all of us experience such relationships

as mentor, friend, co-worker, neighbor, youth minister, teacher.

And we are all daughters and sons.

Sometimes in our lives

we all have pain

we all have sorrow

but if we are wise

we know that there’s always tomorrow

We celebrate this Good Friday, because it gives meaning to ours

We will celebrate it tomorrow – as life tends to teach us.

We know the end of the story

we know that Jesus did what His father wanted him to do.

He, like most of us, knew what was expected

what call had been planted in us.

Jesus made it happen.

And he gave His mother to his friend

and his friend to His mother. And he confided in His Father.

You’ll never understand what you do to me, until you have children of your own.

Tonight, on this Good Friday, we grow in our appreciation for what we did to God, how

we made Him feel. It is through such appreciation that we are open to the depth of His

love and the powerful fulfillment of the resurrection.

Perhaps these words from mother Phyllis Osborne speak most clearly in this time:

Every mother whose marine has come home has experienced that sense of resurrection, that

God has been listening…night after night. When we set eyes on them again, we count each of

their fingers, like when they were newborns. It’s as if our child’s birth has reoccurred all over.”

God offers us such hope, when we trust, when we are faithful to the Good Fridays this world

places us in. God, the Divine parents knows all to well.

He so loved the world, that he gave us His only begotten Son.