By Father Jerry E. Hardy

It dawned like any other Friday. But it wasn't -- this one was to be so bad it would be called "Good" for the rest of time. And in that paradox we have the backdrop for understanding a little more about the dying and living again of Jesus, because His Good Friday is nothing if not paradoxical.

Consider: a young man in the prime of His life gives himself over to death; He does so because He believes, ultimately, that by doing so He will destroy death; He does so for the very people whose choices and values called for His death.

What could possibly motivate such a course of action? This paradox continues, because Jesus does it out of love for us, love for His Father. He does it out of a love of Life. Strange … to die for life. And yet, it is consistent with all He had ever said to us: - "love your life in my service and you'll find it, hold on to it for your own sake and you'll lose it." "Only if the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies does it bear much fruit."

On that Friday, Jesus knew the utter reasonableness of all the objections to His death. He knew all human logic that weighed against His sacrifice. (His Garden Agony shows clearly that He Himself wondered about the wisdom of it: "Is this really necessary? Is it really going to work?")

But He lays all that aside. He passes over all of it to embrace what He had been born for: to give away his whole self for you and for me. He did it even though it hurt His body. He did it even though wise men like the Apostles didn't understand or approve. He did it with an act of self-forgetting love that enabled Him to climb over all the reasonable, self-interest concerns with which He was tempted to settle for less and compromise His miracle.

His death (and his resurrection, because they are two moments of the same act) won our salvation, bought for us Easter's "living again," so that death is never again to be the end for us, but only the beginning.

And, just as important, His Good Friday Death empowers us to do what He did: to love with perseverance and give ourselves away, even (and especially) when it hurts. If we are not living that way, we have missed the point of his paradox: not to live that way is not to live at all. Praise and glory, honor and thanksgiving to you Lord Jesus for living and dying for us so that we might learn how to.

Today's liturgy will be very simple, very bare, very stark. It almost seems like an unfinished song or one that ends on a strange note. It's good if it gives us that feeling. What do you think those who loved believed and hoped in Jesus felt like today? They cheered Him on last Sunday and saw Him crucified today. They had to feel empty.

We ought to, too … because we are they. But our emptiness should be only passing: Jesus dies for nothing if it was to leave us empty … He died to leave the tomb empty, not us. So let this fact fill any void you feel: what we celebrate today is His dying for you because of His love for you.