As I move through Good Friday, the most solemn day of Holy Week, a question stirs uncomfortably in my mind – Why does it have to be this way? Why does God choose to demonstrate the depths of His Love and Mercy for us through the Crucified Jesus?

The prophets foretell that the anointed Servant of the Lord will one day offer Himself as a sacrifice to suffer viciously for the sins of all God’s people. The prophet Isaiah describes that the Lord’s Suffering Servant will be “wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities; upon Him lies the chastisement that will make us whole, and with His stripes, we are healed.” (Isaiah 54: 3).

Another prophecy in Deuteronomy describes that “a hanged man is accursed by God.” (Deuteronomy 21: 22-23)  In these verses, any man who is “hanged on a tree” is described as being “cursed.” The atoning and sacrificial nature of Jesus’ death is clearly evident in these verses since He takes on the punishment and curse that belongs to sinful men and women.

But the question still remains – Why is it that the horror of the Cross must stand at the center of the history of our Salvation? What is God trying to show us through the Cross?

St. Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the Mercy of God (Dives In Misericordia, or “Rich in Mercy) offers us answers:

“The events of Good Friday and, even before that, in prayer in Gethsemane, introduce a fundamental change into the whole course of the revelation of love and mercy in the messianic mission of Christ. The one who ‘went about doing good and healing’(Acts 10: 38) and ‘curing every sickness and disease’ (Matthew 9: 35) now Himself seems to merit the greatest mercy and to appeal for mercy, when He is arrested, abused, condemned, scourged, crowned with thorns, when He is nailed to the cross and dies amidst agonizing torments. (Mark 15: 37, John 19: 30). 

“It is then that He particularly deserves mercy from the people to whom He has done good, and He does not receive it. …

… “In the passion and death of Christ — in the fact that the Father did not spare His own Son, but ‘for our sake made him [bear the burden of] sin’ (2 Corinthians 5: 21) — absolute justice is expressed, for Christ undergoes the passion and cross because of the sins of humanity. This constitutes even a ‘superabundance’ of justice, for the sins of man are ‘compensated for’ by the sacrifice of the Man — God.

“Nevertheless, this justice, which is properly justice ‘to God’s measure,’ springs completely from love: from the love of the Father and of the Son, and completely bears fruit in love … The divine dimension of redemption is put into effect not only by bringing justice to bear upon sin, but also by restoring to love that creative power in man … [for] he once more has access to the fullness of life and holiness that come from God …

… “The cross on Calvary, the cross upon which Christ conducts His final dialogue with the Father, emerges from the very heart of the love that man, created in the image and likeness of God, has been given as a gift, according to God’s eternal plan … It is love which not only creates the good but also grants participation in the very life of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For he who loves desires to give himself.

“The cross of Christ on Calvary … includes the call to man to share in the divine life by giving himself, and with himself the whole visible world, to God, and like an adopted son to become a sharer in the truth and love which is in God and proceeds from God. It is precisely beside the path of man’s eternal election to the dignity of being an adopted child of God that there stands in history the cross of Christ, the only begotten Son, who, as ‘light from light, true God from true God,’ (The Nicene Creed) came to give the final witness to the wonderful covenant of God with humanity, of God with man — every human being.

“This covenant, as old as man … is equally the new and definitive covenant … open to each and every individual. … And yet this is not yet the word of the God of the covenant: that will be pronounced at the dawn when first the women and then the Apostles come to the tomb of the crucified Christ, see the tomb empty and for the first time hear the message: “He is risen.” They will repeat this message to the others and will be witnesses to the risen Christ. …

… “Believing in the crucified Son means “seeing the Father,” (John 14: 9) means believing that love is present in the world and that this love is more powerful than any kind of evil in which individuals, humanity, or the world are involved.

“Believing in this love means believing in mercy. For mercy is an indispensable dimension of love; it is as it were love’s second name.”1

I love this encyclical so much. St. Pope John Paul II’s words are even more meaningful when we reflect on his life. Although he was the child of a loving family, his life was not easy. Born in Poland, in 1920, he had lost his mother and older brother by the time he was twelve years old. An older sister had died in infancy. He was raised by his father, a deeply religious man, in the midst of political turmoil and social chaos. St. Pope John Paul II would lose his father to a heart attack in 1941. Through all of this, St. Pope John Paul II continued to search for and find the indescribable Love and Mercy of God.

St. Pope John Paul II’s life and words give us great hope.

On this Good Friday, as we look to the Cross, let us recognize the power of Divine Love and Mercy to lift all of us high above the horror of sin and the chaos of evil.

1Click here to read in full St. Pope John Paul II’s Dives In Misericordia, published November 30, 1980. The excerpts above are taken from Chapters 7 and 8.