Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion April 3, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
N.B. This is the second of a three-part series of homilies on the topic of desire. The first part can be found here and the third part here.
The video livestream kept disconnecting, so there is only this audio recording done after the fact:
“Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave me?” Jesus wants to drink that cup, he desires to embrace the suffering and death prepared for him by the Father’s will. Why? Because desire is destiny and the destiny of Jesus Christ is to die and rise again for the salvation of the world. So, he cultivates and nourishes his desire for that suffering.
Last night, we began the paschal triduum. As is my custom, the three homilies for these three days turn on a central axis, a common theme. This year, that theme is desire. Last night placed before us the desire for love. Tomorrow we’ll consider our desire for light. Today, though, is about our desire to suffer.
But do we actually want to suffer? Do we not rather merely tolerate suffering for the sake of something better? Yes and no. Strictly speaking, human suffering is the result of Original Sin and in heaven it will disappear. Jesus himself prays “let this cup pass” while sweating blood because he definitely does not want the pain. In the most absolute sense, no, we do not want to suffer.
And yet, we do not live in an absolute way, but a relative one. For us, to live and act with any sort of meaning requires context and relationships. At one point in his ministry, Jesus exclaims “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!” He’s talking about his suffering and death and his “anguish” is having to wait a little longer. He is looking forward to his crucifixion. Yes, he’s looking past that to his resurrection, but there is still a very real eagerness for the actual moment of suffering & death just as last night he “eagerly desired to eat” the Passover with us.
You can see this desire to suffer in the way little boys play games like bloody knuckles, in the bragging of athletes about a hard workout. You can see it in the pride a woman has in describing a long labor or a particularly large child. Human beings sometimes find themselves wishing for the chance to suffer for a person they love. Yes, it’s the love we want, but in context, we also want the suffering. And if we would share the destiny of our resurrected Lord, we should strive to nurture our desire to be like the crucified Lord.
Suffering is a result of Original Sin, but so is clothing. It is not wrong that we want good clothing and there is wisdom in cultivating a desire for good suffering. Not masochism, but the kind of smoldering fire, the slight burning in the chest you sometimes feel when you hear stories of people who did difficult things and suffered for noble causes. It’s in the begrudging respect you have for people with incredible discipline and the admiration we have for survivors. And when you add grace to this natural inclination? When we follow our master’s example of love beyond service and into suffering, that is when we encounter a more divine desire. As true love means nurturing our desires for communion, conversion, and service, so true love should nurture our desire for suffering in the forms of penitence and sacrifice.
For us to have the destiny of eternal life, we must cultivate the desire for penitence. When you’ve hurt someone, failed them, done some kind of wrong… you know this feeling… you want to feel some form of suffering to make it right. To show my sorrow to you, it should hurt, it should cost. Nurture that desire. Guide it wisely and beware the traps of excess, but foster in yourself a willingness and a desire to suffer for your own sins. You cannot pay the entire price yourself, but your willingness to suffer what you can is a necessary part of repentance.
Then there is sacrifice, the desire to do something good for another at some cost to myself. When we feel it, when it hurts to do the thing for one we love, there’s a kind of freedom in the pain. To suffer in a sacrificial way sets us free from ourselves in some sense. It proves to us and others that the love is not merely selfish. It’s how Padre Pio could write in one letter that, “I wish to be inebriated with pain.” It’s because, when pure love is immersed in this corrupt world, it reacts like a hot coal in water. The “steam” of sacrificial love is suffering and we should learn to want it because, if it’s not there, it might mean the heat is gone.
So, do not let it grow cold! Desire is destiny and the destiny of eternal love requires us to foster the desire to suffer, to cultivate it and tie it always to the cross of Jesus Christ. Do not let a day pass without choosing to do something difficult, something that causes you some suffering either to express sorrow for sin or a love that costs you. By your desire for penitence and sacrifice, keep that ember of love alive so that, even when it’s too dark to see, you’ll know by the heat of suffering that the fire of love is still there, ready to be fanned into a flame that lights the darkness and reveals the love that is your destiny.