St. Boniface House

“‘Having said this he breathed his last.’ Dead. Jesus is dead…We are told in John 1:18 that without the Son no one can see the Father. Von Balthasar, therefore, reminds us ‘when the Son, the Word of the Father is dead, then no one can see God, hear of him or attain him. And this day exists, when the Son is dead, and the Father, accordingly, inaccessible.’ This is the terror, the silence of the Father, to which Jesus has committed himself, this is why he cried the cry of abandonment. He has commended himself to the Father so he might undergo the dark night of death. Jesus commends himself to the Father, becoming for us all that is contrary to God.”

     –Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words, 97.

“We take comfort…that we are citizens fo the greatest, most powerful nation in the history of the world. Doing so, we are tempted to support exercises of American might and wealth that may be unjust but are assumed to be necessary to secure our nation’s power.  To be a citizen of such a nation at least suggests our lives will not be forgotten. When the history of history is written, America, like Rome, cannot be forgotten; as Americans we will have a place in history. Is it any wonder that a people so formed believe that what is happening in this man Jesus’ life is something about our significance? Is it any wonder that we find the lean and gaunt account of the life and crucifixion of Christ so unsatisfying?”

     –Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words, 41-42.

“Is it any wonder we find Good Friday so shattering? On this day and with these words, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing,” all our presumptions about God and the salvation wrought by God are rendered presumptuous. Moreover, that is how we discover that what happens on the cross really is about us, but the ‘what’ that is about us challenges our presumptions about what kind of salvation we need. Through the cross of Christ we are drawn into the mystery of the Trinity. This is God’s work on our behalf. We are made members of a kingdom governed by a politics of forgiveness and redemption. The world is offered an alternative unimaginable by our sin-determined fantasies.”

     –Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words, 31.

“I believe with all my heart that the constant temptation to betray the gospel, a temptation amply displayed by the history of the church, cannot be resisted in our day by Christians trying to imitate the false humility of tolerance. Rather, the only resource for Christians to resist the ideological distortions of our faith–distortions all the more tempting because to be ’self-servingly dramatic’ seems a better alternative than to be boring–is our faith in the God to whom Christ prays on the cross.”

     –Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words, 19.