At noon on Good Friday at St. Michael’s Church in midtown Manhattan — just blocks from Penn Station — Father George W. Rutler, author of The Seven Ages of Man: Meditations on the Last Words of Christ, will be leading a meditation.
For many years in Manhattan, he has led such a meditation on the last words of Jesus, from noon until the hour His death is commemorated at 3 p.m. Father Rutler is rapidly becoming one of the authors with the most books on Katheryn Jean Lopez’ bookshelf, including his most recent books: The Stories of Hymns: The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns and He Spoke to Us: Discerning God in People and Events.
Writer Katheryn Jean Lopez and Fr. George W. Rutler discuss Good Friday and these books — as well as William F. Buckley Jr. and his faith, too, in a wonderful interview that appeared in National Review. See for yourself:
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why is it so crucial to focus on the seven last words of Christ on the cross on Good Friday?
Father George W. Rutler: Preaching on the seven last words is not part of the Solemn Liturgy of the Passion, which is among the oldest rites (for instance, the hymn called The Reproaches, or Improperia still retains Greek as well as Latin even in the Western Rite.)
In the 18th century, missionaries in Peru used the hours from noon to 3 p.m., representing the time of the Crucifixion, to explain the essential theology of redemptive suffering. The custom spread, encouraged by Pope Pius VII. Having been neglected for some years, it seems to be reviving.
The seven last words are a compilation of the utterances from the Cross, quoted variously in the Gospel accounts. The seven homilies are interspersed with music and prayers, which vary since it is not a formally prescribed liturgy. The seven “days” of creation are paralleled by the seven times Christ spoke, representing how the sacrificial death on the Cross restored a fallen creation.
I have preached on Good Friday for about 45 years, and there is no limit to the depths of what these last words contain. For half a dozen years after my former church St. Agnes burned and was being rebuilt, I preached the “Tre Ore” in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, and what began as missionary preaching to the Inca people of Peru worked as well for New Yorkers.
Lopez: Why do we need Lent? And what if we didn’t have a good or prayerful one this year? Is there a chance to make up for it this Holy Week?
Rutler: The 40 days are a time to take an inventory of our souls: What is the condition of our intellect and moral will? It is also a time to discipline the human appetites. Lent is a kind of gymnasium for our spiritual health, a development of what was the Socratic rejection of the “unexamined life” more than four centuries earlier.
Saint John Vianney said that not all the saints started well, but they ended well.
Around the year 400, Saint John Chrysostom preached his famous Paschal homily, the “Hieratikon,” in which he said that those who come to the feast last have a place at the table with those who fasted from the start. That is not a formula for laziness, but it is a humbling lesson in God’s mercy. Chrysostom was paraphrasing Christ, so he had a good source.
Lopez: On another matter: How are penguins morally exploited?
Rutler: I assume that this question refers to my essay on the subject in my book He Spoke to Us. That was about the publicity surrounding two male Chinstrap penguins (species Pygoscelis antarctica) named Ray and Silo in the Central Park Zoo that the New York Times, in one of its more risible articles, proposed as models for same-sex marriage in the animal kingdom. I enjoyed writing that essay, since it occasioned the satire that is the only sane response to many absurd social-engineering articles in what used to be a…. Read the full interview here>>
RELATED RESOURCES:
- Hymn: The Reproaches (Improperia): choir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgLLSoI_22Q or Fr. Vogel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx3i_xOVhf8