We will assemble this day, as a community of Christians to contemplate the mystery of the passion and death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We will recount and meditate upon the seven last words spoken by our Lord from the Cross.
The Cross stands out in sharp outline over against modern paganism. The Crucifixion is the Divine answer to a re-emergent paganism which is saturated with an element of degeneracy that did not exist in the old paganism. The modern pagan knows what he or she is about. They have heard the truth and smugly rejected it.
The modern pagan likely has had at least an intellectual contact with the Divine Teacher. They have had a spiritual opportunity for meeting Jesus Christ have repudiated Him in terms that leave no doubt as to intent.
The modern pagan cries of Christ: “Away with Him. Crucify Him.” And Christian morality? For that modern paganism has more than mere scorn: it has an arrogant and poisonous contempt.
Beloved in Christ, the old days of a harmless conventional Christianity are over. For Anglo-Catholics in particular, the days of arguing over which vestments to wear, what antiquated hat clergy shall don, what ritual manual to follow are simply done. The tiresome disputes over “high church” or “low church” are over as well. The choice today, the choice this Good Friday, lies between Christianity and paganism.
Never have Christians in any age been confronted with that choice more pointedly and pressingly than today. Paganism and atheism are aggressively taught in schools and universities, embraced by the media and the courts of law and pumped into our homes relentlessly and at high speed via the information superhighway.
We stand at the parting of the way on this Good Friday 2015. One road leads to a pagan world, prosperous, brilliant, attractive, seemingly sophisticated. It is all there for the taking. He or she who will is free to travel upon it.
The other road leads to Calvary, along the way of sorrows, up the hill, straight to the Cross. The way of sorrows, it is our business to say, is the way of peace. It is the way of wonder. It is the way to glory.
The Cathedral Close 