DGeMs- Daily Gospel eMessage
Dear Friend in the Lord,
Good Friday: In today’s Gospel, Jesus embraces His most cruel torments that threatened to kill Him even before He is Crucified. The Romans have “perfected” their evil forms of torture that inflict the most painful and prolonged suffering before the criminal dies. Do we treat people who hate us with mercy?
Fr Philip Heng, S.J.
John 18:1,19:1, 4-6,16-17,18-19, 25, 28-30
Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron valley where there was a garden into which he went with his disciples. Pilate then had Jesus taken away and scourged. Pilate came outside again and said to them, ‘Look, I am going to bring him out to you to let you see that I find no case against him.’ Jesus then came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said, ‘Here is the man.’ When they saw him, the chief priests and the guards shouted, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ Pilate said, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him: I find no case against him.’
So at that Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. The soldiers then took charge of Jesus, and carrying his own cross he went out to the Place of the Skull where they crucified him with two others, one on either side, Jesus being in the middle. Pilate wrote out a notice and had it fixed to the cross; it ran: ‘Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews’.
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. After this, Jesus knew that everything had now been completed and, so that the scripture should be completely fulfilled, he said: I am thirsty. A jar full of sour wine stood there; so, putting a sponge soaked in the wine on a hyssop stick, they held it up to his mouth. After Jesus had taken the wine he said, ‘It is fulfilled’; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.