Good Friday (2026)
It’s tempting to think of these three days of the Holy Triduum as a kind of reenactment—as if we are simply revisiting events from long ago, setting them apart from our ordinary lives.
If this is our perspective, then Good Friday can be reduced to little more than a reflection on suffering—on everything Jesus endured that day.
But suffering, by itself, is not the meaning of the Cross. And if that is all we see, then we have not yet understood what this day reveals.
And if we see this only as a reenactment—we miss the greater truth and the gift of this day:
Consummatum est.
It is finished.
The great lesson of Good Friday is that what Jesus came to do is finished. Jesus has accomplished the mission that had been entrusted to him by the Father.
We know from the story of his agony in the garden that Jesus struggled with the prospect of suffering and death—he didn’t want to suffer and he was afraid of what was going to happen to him. He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me.” But this was not the end of his prayer. He continued: “Still, not my will but yours be done.”
Jesus drank fully and deeply of that cup the Father had given to him.
But we misunderstand this “cup” if we see it only as suffering or punishment.
The cup is his mission—the call to love completely, to hold nothing back, to offer everything to the Father.
And in accepting that mission, the Cross becomes not a sign of defeat, but of self-giving love.
And so this cup becomes a cup of blessing, a cup of grace, a cup of salvation.
In Jesus, God joined us in our very human experiences of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, hope and fear, love and loss. And on that Cross, hanging between heaven and earth, Jesus poured out all that he was, offering everything to the Father.
And today we remember that Jesus also offered us to God—we have been lifted up with him on the wood of the Cross and into the promise of his Resurrection.
This was his mission. This is what his death on the Cross reveals:
Jesus came so that we could be lifted up to God.
Consummatum est.
It is finished.
That changes how we understand everything that has just taken place. And this is where Good Friday touches our lives.
In the end, the suffering of Jesus remains a hard and sobering truth. But we also remember that he was only able to complete his mission because he held nothing back.
And this is the invitation placed before us:
We must be willing to drink fully and deeply from the cups of our own lives—to accept the call to live for others—we must be willing to embrace our own crosses—if we are to discover the fullness of life in God that we say we desire.
This is how we share in Jesus’ mission.
This is how we participate in the redemption of the world.
And we remember that the Cross was not the end for Jesus.
Good Friday is not where the story ends.
And perhaps the deepest way to enter into this mystery is not through explanation, but through reflection.
In the final days of his life, Cardinal Basil Hume, a Benedictine monk and archbishop of Westminster, wrote:
Obedient to his Father’s will,
he has accomplished
the work that he was given.
To take our pain
and death as well—
upon himself.
Death, the wages of sin
borne by him,
ever pure and sinless.
He had become man
to endure the pain
known by many
in wars, famine,
earthquakes too.
In the souls as well—
mental anguish,
adversity,
loss of reason.
You know suffering?
So did he.
Have you felt abandoned?
And abandoned by God too?
So did he.
Have you been humiliated,
despised,
insulted?
So was he.
You have been misunderstood,
vilified?
So was he.
He, too, walked in the dark,
entered the tomb
lifeless and defeated,
vanquished.
Death could not win.
His body would not be imprisoned.
He rose again,
victorious over death
and over sin.
He has made
all things new.
It is finished.
The work is done.
There will still be suffering,
earthquakes,
wars and famine,
mental anguish, anxiety, loss of reason,
still part of human living,
but different now.
He has hidden in human pain
the seed of divine life.
Hope is now hidden in human despair,
joy concealed in human sadness.
Anguish, anxiety,
the ravages of war,
famines, earthquakes
hide within themselves
a rich reward,
a precious treasure—
life hidden with Christ in God
for the sharers in his passion.
Not for me
to read the mind of God,
nor to pronounce on his ways.
Much is hidden,
little revealed.
And yet,
though hard at times to see,
love is his reason.
This
and only this
inspires his deeds.
Consummatum est.
It is finished.
Amen.
Father,
look with love upon your people,
the love which the Lord Jesus Christ showed us
when he delivered himself to evil men
and suffered the agony of the cross,
for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Prepared for Saints Peter and Paul Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
