Homily for the Office of the Passion - Good Friday

Friday April 3 2026
Good Friday – Year A

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

First reading: Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12

Psalm: 30 (31), 2ab.6,12,13-14ad,15-16,17.2

Second reading: Hebrews 4:4-16; 5:7-9

Gospel: John 18:1–19:42

As I said on Sunday after the proclamation of the Passion according to Saint Matthew: ever since death entered the world through sin, humanity has often resolved its problems through death, by causing death, by destroying, both personally and on a national level. And on a national level, it's not just the death of innocents, it's also the destruction of villages, towns… And in Lisieux, we know this all too well, having seen 80% of our city destroyed on June 6, 1944… We know the tragedies this causes. Since sin entered the world, death has been at work, not only through illness, but also through humanity. And this capacity to cause death dwells in the hearts of all people, and in our own hearts as well. To conquer death, God could only do so through a person who dies. When we speak of death, it is a concept, something abstract: what is concrete, what exists, is someone who dies. And we know this well from mourning our deceased loved ones; those who have died are gone forever. To conquer death, therefore, God had to do so in someone who dies, but who dies in such a way that they can welcome this life stronger than death. Someone had to enter into death, entirely open to the Father's paternal goodness. This is what the Word made flesh came to do: Jesus, the eternal Son of the eternal Father, became man to come and experience our human death, and in the deepest realm of the dead, to allow himself to be born into human life through the resurrection. Jesus' response to suffering and death is not to evade it, to circumvent it, but to enter into it. This is what we heard in the Letter to the Hebrews: “During the days of his life on earth, Christ offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to God who was able to save him from death, and he was heard.” He did not ask to be spared from death, to circumvent death, but to be saved from it. And he was heard. And what we contemplate in this Passion of Jesus is what chapter 53 of the Book of Isaiah prophetically described: “My righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.” In his Passion and in his death on the cross, Jesus bears, takes upon himself our faults, our sins, to deliver us from them.

This is how Jesus will try to make Pilate understand, and therefore us as well, that his kingdom is not of this world. He explicitly told Pilate: "My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, I would have guards who would have fought." This Kingdom of God is the very life of God. This Kingdom of God, therefore, is the life of Trinitarian love. This Kingdom of God is that of charity, understanding the word charity as designating the love which unites the Father and the Son, this love which is the Holy Spirit, this Holy Spirit which pours into our hearts the charity of God (Rom 5:5). Saint Teresa repeatedly dwells on this statement, "My kingdom is not of this world." Already on the day of her profession, September 8, 1890, in a letter to her sister and godmother Marie du Sacré-Cœur, she told her: Day of eternal remembrance when your little girl became like you the wife of him who said: "My kingdom is not of this world". She does not say the wife of Jesus, she says: the wife of the one who said “My Kingdom is not of this world”. and further on: “But in addition, you will soon see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven at the right hand of God. "For us, this is the day we are waiting for... The day of the eternal wedding when our Jesus will wipe away all the tears from our eyes, when He will make us sit with Him on His throne... (LT 117 of September 8, 1890) And a little later, she will write in manuscript A: I have understood what true glory is. He whose kingdom is not of this world showed me that true wisdom consists in "wanting to be ignored and counted for nothing" — in "finding joy in self-contempt". (Ms A Folio 71, r°) What did Thérèse see? She seeks to live as an anticipation of Heaven. She understands that this Kingdom towards which we walk, this Kingdom which she desires more than anything, this Kingdom which is eternal and in which we are called to live eternally, this Kingdom is already present in Jesus; and that we have a part in this Kingdom to the extent that we live the Gospel, to the extent that we follow Jesus, to the extent that we seek to live in faith in Jesus who died and rose again, in the hope of Heaven and above all in charity concretely lived with those around us. My kingdom is not of this world; yet this world is where we live. And this world constantly demands our attention, driven by its own logic. But let us remember the Lord’s prayer before his Passion: “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one… They are not of the world just as I am not of the world,” said Jesus (Jn 17:15, 14). It is not the world as it is that defines us, it is the Kingdom towards which we are walking. In a letter to her sister Céline, Thérèse lets something slip. She said: Life… ah! It's true that for us it no longer holds any charm… — in the austerity of Carmel, one can understand what she says there: “Life no longer holds any charm”; but immediately she corrects herself: she is writing and we witness her thought developing — but I am mistaken, it is true that the charms of the world have vanished for us, but it is just smoke… and reality remains, yes, life is a treasure… In seeking to live from the Kingdom, in seeking not to be engulfed, absorbed by the charms of the world, it is not a question of renouncing life, it is not a question of despising life, quite the contrary… each moment is an eternity, an eternity of joy for heaven, an eternity of seeing God face to face, of being one with him!… Only Jesus exists; all the rest does not… let us therefore love him madly. (LT 96 of October 15, 1889) And so if we really want to welcome this Kingdom which is not of this world, this Kingdom which is already the presence of something of eternity in our time, it is a matter of loving Jesus. He is our treasure; he is the one we must follow, love, imitate, and serve. "Your face is my only homeland," Thérèse exclaims in one of her poems, "It is my kingdom of love." She is my smiling meadow, my gentle sunshine every day. (PN 20) And she does not say it for herself only: she draws others along in her wake, she draws us along in her wake. As proof, I offer what she wrote to Father Bellière, a seminarian destined to go on a mission, a man who is often worried and anxious, who is afraid of doing wrong. Two months before her death, Thérèse wrote to Abbé Bellière. She said to him: Ah! Your soul is too great to cling to any earthly consolation. But Thérèse tells us, brothers and sisters, this afternoon: Your soul is too great to cling to any consolation of this earth, it is in heaven that you must live in advance because it is said: "Where is your treasure. Your heart is there too. "Your only Treasure, isn't it Jesus?" Since he is in Heaven, that is where your heart should dwell. (LT 261 of July 26, 1897) Well then, let us ask for this grace, brothers and sisters, in solemnly celebrating the Passion of Jesus, the grace to recognize in him our only treasure and to seek day after day, progressively, to live more and more in such a way that Jesus actually becomes our only treasure.

Amen.