Good Friday: Love Saves the World
by the Reverend Noel E. Bordador

Readings: Matthew chapters 26 and 27

Every time I visit my family, I take the time to pray at the church where my mom was baptized ninety three years ago, also the parish where she and my father were married more than fifty eight years ago. The church itself, founded more than four hundred years ago, was administered by Irish missionaries who first came when the United States took possession of the Philippines shortly after the Spanish-American War. I’ve heard fond things about these missionaries. One of my mother’s sisters told me that when my grandmother and her children suddenly became homeless (no thanks to my grandfather who squandered all the money away), my grandmother went to the parish priest who took pity on her and her children, and gave them shelter.  The other story I was told took place during the Second World War. Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese invaded the Philippines since it was part of the United States. The Americans headed by General McArthur could not defend it and the Americans retreated to the safety of Australia. The priests were warned that their lives were in danger and that they should save their lives. It would mean, however, abandoning the parish. But the priests refused to abandon the flock entrusted to their care by God. They felt that it would be a betrayal of God’s love if they saved themselves while their flock perished. They believed that their place was to be with the suffering people of God- with the sick, the wounded, the hungry and people made homeless by war. But to save themselves and abandon their people would mean losing their souls. “For what will it profit a person if he or she gained the whole world but forfeit his or her soul?” Jesus once asked (Luke 9:25) The Japanese came and the priests were rounded up. One was said to have been fastened on a cross, his hands stretched out like his Lord who, two thousand years ago, was also fastened on that awful Tree on Calvary. Then they were taken away to be seen no more. Yet the selfless love they showed is remembered by many generations.

Good Friday is a very difficult day not only because it reminds us of our mortality. Good Friday is difficult because it shows us our fallen nature, that is, our deep capacity as humans to be cruel and inhumane to one another. Good Friday reveals to us our capacity for deadly hate. Yet, there is also a great beauty to this day. We must remind ourselves that Christ on the Cross was not only fully God BUT also fully human. The humanity he showed on the Cross is OUR real and true humanity. Christ hanging on the Awful Tree of Calvary reveals the beauty of our human nature. That is, our true and real humanity consists in being filled with divinity that enables us to be people deeply, deeply capable of compassion and mercy and love for others, even to the point of offering one’s life in the service of others, living our lives so that others might have come to have joy and fullness of life. Conversely, our hateful selves, that part of our human nature that is unloving, that one is our false humanity which must be shed.

Good Friday confronts us about the contradiction in our humanity, and we are asked to make a choice. Must we give expression to our fallen humanity by which we act selfishly, cruelly, unjustly and unloving to one another, perhaps, indifferent to the sufferings of others?  Or do we live out our true humanity in Christ, in imitation of that perfect human on the Cross, Jesus, who lived his life with compassion, mercy and sacrificial and selfless love so that through that mercy and love, the world is saved?  The world was saved by love. And love will save the world.

 

©2025 Noel E. Bordador

Noel Bordador is a queer Episcopal priest in the Philippines. He runs Nazareth House, a Catholic Worker House of Hospitality for persons with HIV/AIDS in Manila.


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