“God has come into the world and manifested his great love in the flesh: so how have I rejected that love?”

“Wisdom is the knowledge about how to live well and fully as human beings in accordance with the will of God and the dignity of our natures”

“Our God is one we can worship with our whole hearts, knowing it understands what it means to live in a fallen world. That is the answer given to those who suffer, and we who walk with them: like Christ, we will come before the throne of God, and be exalted to the highest place, and see the light of life itself.”

“the cross doesn’t just show sin for what it is. It also definitively shows God’s response...God’s incompressible response to sin is love.”

“Good Friday teaches us there is joy to be found precisely in the stress and strain of our making sacrifices for others. It is then that we share in Jesus’ greatest of all loving–His self-giving for the well-being of mankind.”

“That, perhaps, is essential to the power of nonviolence – it is not afraid of death; it would rather die than kill another person or ignore the death-dealing violence and injustice that are so prevalent in our world”

“Today the God of all creation tells us that those who do care for the poor, those who take a stand against injustice, those who seek to bring peace and yet suffer ,those are ones whose lives are acceptable to God.”

“The message of the life of Jesus spoken clearly in the crucifixion is just this: “All you who are broken, come.” In fact, His message is even stronger: especially you who are broken, “be with me in Paradise.””

“the Christ of John’s gospel in particular is this amazingly free person in charge of his life, yet totally subject to the will of the Father, seemingly beyond the authority of those around him and yet bound to humanity by that Father’s will, so that he may bring them life”

“The first stage of overcoming the evil of death is to overcome our fear. This requires courage but the proper remedy for fear, in the Christian disposition, is not courage but hope.”

“Our response to listening once again this Good Friday to the story of divine mercy, the story of Jesus’s passion and death, should be to confirm and deepen our choice of truth, of love, of beauty, of justice”

“Through the streets, among those to whom he is sent, he carries his cross – the throne of his glory...the power of this King comes not from below, but from above. Jesus is his own master and carries his cross himself, so that his triumph is made known.”

“Love is transforming, the source of all change in us. Without it we are dehumanised and can die. Jesus shows us that we are lovable enough to die for.”

“People feared Jesus because he didn’t have a shadow side, and that meant he showed up the shadow side of those around him. This is not because Jesus was constantly pointing out people’s faults but because a bright light always makes the shadows sharper and easier to see.”

“The goodness of Jesus’s love and sacrifice at Calvary is immense, permanent and efficacious”

“The power of the liturgy of Good Friday comes from the silent gaze of him who bore ‘the weight of our sins on the tree.’”

“So we who come to the liturgy on Good Friday believing that this is the story of the death of the Son of God, a death that brings us freedom from death, a Passion that liberates us from sin, we Christians can hardly fail to be moved once again by this great mystery at the heart of our faith”

“The world seems too cruel a place and God too remote. But the crucifixion proclaims that it is man who is cruel, not God, and that God could not have been closer to human experience.”

“Why is the cross a glorification? Because it is the extreme expression of love; only a God most truly worthy of love and worship would and could undergo such radical self-sacrifice for our sakes.”

“Christians, like all other people, will suffer and die. Yet we will not do so alone, for the suffering Christ is with us...We can only overcome our fear of death and find healing for our pain if we are united with Christ on the cross.”

“Our call is one of faith, hope and love in response to the greatest act of love ever made on our behalf”

“Tanzanians have a saying when things seem almost beyond redemption: “Mungu upo” – God is here...On this Good Friday, and in the days to come, let us stand for the values Christ died for and to build a community compassion, love and enduring trust in God.”

“The Bible begins with Adam — The Man — rising up against God in the garden. To counter human pride, the new Adam obediently handed himself over in a garden...He was buried in a garden where, in his resurrection, he would re-fashion human nature in beauty.”

“In today’s passion John does not see the cross just in terms of suffering but also in terms of the power of God’s love. He sees the cross not only as an instrument of torture but also as a throne on which Christ sits as divine and majestic king”