Homily for the Liturgy of Good Friday

April 3, 2026

In one section of C.S. Lewis’ wonderful little book, The Screwtape Letters, the demonic mentor provides ample suggestions for how to distract the “patient” in prayer. On the one hand, a good tempter might push the patient towards a sort of abstract prayerful attitude in which bodily posture matters not; this is very effective because it “bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practiced by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy's service,” so “clever and lazy patients can be taken in by it for quite a long time.” If the patient advances in prayer all the same, the demon suggests then trying to distract him with an object and convincing him that all his prayer is entirely centered on that object — a crucifix, for example. Should he ever come to realize that God is not the object itself, but that the object might be a sort of vehicle to God’s transcendence, the tempter’s situation has become desperate.

Monsignor Ronald Knox makes some interesting parallel observations in one of his retreat conferences (The Layman and his Conscience). He notes that some people like to pray with eyes closed, some with eyes open. Both have certain reasonable motivations, and both have their dangers. Obviously the prayer with eyes open can distract us with any number of sights. But the prayer with eyes closed can just as easily fool us into thinking that we are not distracted and lead us more directly into those internal distractions of the mind. He recommends, generally, the eyes-open approach: rather than trying to “put yourself in the presence of God,” he suggests “putting yourself in the presence of something else” in order to find God there: “You can look hard at your distractions, and make them melt away into that background, which is God.”

I should think it obvious why I harp today on this theme of visual distraction and focus. In Passiontide we veil the images of the church, but today we dramatically unveil one central image, the Man on the Cross. The Veneration of the Cross is one of those devotions that brings out some of our more disordered theologies. Many people, and not just committed Protestants or iconoclasts, find the central placement and focus on this image difficult or problematic: should we not focus rather on the idea and the event of the crucifixion rather than this visual representation? Is there not something vaguely idolatrous about bowing and kissing a carved image, even one of Christ? Others might fall into an opposite temptation, though to be honest I think this is far more rare, of treating the veneration as a magical ceremony wherein I have to take certain steps and gestures just so in order to achieve a particular result. The truth is that the Son of God is not somehow located in this crucifix; in the order of being, we are no closer to him here than we are anywhere else. But it is also true that we human beings do not encounter truth and event unfiltered; we cannot look at the sun and retain our sight. Human life is full of signs, full of things that point to other things. Meaning is a constant work of veiling and unveiling. We veil things that matter: the altar, the tabernacle, the human body. Removing the veil is literally an apocalypse, a revelation.

There are multiple apocalypses in the Passion story, but let us just note two: the literal unveiling of Christ’s body before his crucifixion (Jn 19:23), and the rending of the curtain in the temple from top to bottom at the moment of his death (Mt 27:51). In the first, the Lord’s nakedness is a stark reminder of his total humiliation and his total gift: he holds nothing back, not even that shred of bodily dignity which pious tradition normally gives him in our art. In the second, the unveiling of the Holy of Holies shows that in the Cross we are staring, somehow, directly into the divine Presence.

The rending of the veil is a sign of finality, to be sure — the same finality spoken of in the Letter to the Hebrews. But it does not imply the end of all signs, all veiling, all poetic metaphor. To put it bluntly, the early Christians were not nudists, and both ordinary clothing and liturgical clothing remained the norm along with a multiplicity of additional signs and symbols. But there is a newness in this strange sign of the exposed, crucified God. Human nature itself has become a veil for divinity. Human suffering has become a veil for divine suffering. Human death has become a veil for eternal life.

Rather than doing away with our images and symbols, Good Friday gives them all a greater richness and meaning, insists that through these signs — our flesh, our work, our art, and above all in the Sacraments of the New Covenant — the transcendent God, beyond all signs, condescends to make himself known to us.

Let me return finally to what Msgr. Knox says about distractions. Rightly do we want to see God free of distractions. Distraction in prayer and distraction in Mass are probably some of the most frequent things I hear in confession. Still, so often this worry about distraction is founded on a false idea of what worship should look like. As an example, I used to give my students a playlist of church music and ask for their reactions. One of the most constant comments was a worry that some of the music was, well, too beautiful; it might, they said, be distracting at Mass. This was fascinating to me, because it revealed an assumption that the purpose of Mass is to be mentally focused on Jesus (who I suppose must be encountered only in the intellect) and nothing else. You see a similar mindset in those who hate to hear the sound of children because it distracts them from the prayers, or the music, or the preaching. The liturgy then becomes this public facilitation of what is ultimately a private moment. And please don’t hear me suggesting here that it is fine to intentionally make your grocery list during the canon of the Mass, or that church music should have the quality of Broadway show tunes, or that there is never a point when a parent really ought to walk out with a screaming child. But to look at the cross today, and Christ on it, requires being able to see him behind and within all these others signs. He is there in the music, whether it’s uplifting or unexpected; he is there in the bad preaching, or the distractingly good preaching; he is there in the screaming child and the overwhelmed mom in the pew; he is there in the awkward street person who wandered in and has no idea what is going on. Wherever it is, he is there, veiled, waiting to be known and loved.

Sometimes we have to look hard at our distractions to find in them the gospel. This is the world that Christ died for. He did not die for some other world without people or without things. He died for you and for me, so kneel before this unveiled sign of his love and know that behind all the pain and sorrow of this life he is the brightness shining through.