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The Easter Cycle
Friday
Four weeks from today will be Good Friday. In the Collect of the Mass today we pray that we
may receive the grace to prepare ourselves for the coming solemnities with sincere minds. Thus
our thoughts today are carried forward to the passion and death of our Lord. The atmosphere
of Good Friday hovers over the liturgy today and takes possession of our soul.
The liturgy furnishes us with an image of the suffering Savior in the person of Joseph in Egypt.
Joseph is the favorite son of Jacob, but he is hated by his brethren. Jacob sends Joseph to his
brothers in Sichem, where they have been pasturing their sheep. Joseph carries out the wish
of his father and finds his brethren, not in Sichem but in Dothain. They see him coming from
afar and say, “Let us kill him and cast him into some old pit, and we will say: Some evil beast
hath devoured him” (Epistle). Ruben, one of the brethren, is opposed to this plan, and they are
content to cast him into a dry cistern; later they decide to sell him as a slave for thirty pieces of
silver, to a group of merchants who are making their way into Egypt. Then they tell their father
that Joseph has been slain by a wild beast.
Meanwhile Joseph, who was rejected and sold into captivity by his brethren, is wonderfully
exalted by the Lord in Egypt. He becomes the first minister to the king of Egypt and saves the
country from famine. When his brethren come to pay their respects to the King and obtain
grain, Joseph reveals his identity, and his aged father hastens to his son, whom he had thought
to be dead, and finds a home and needed assistance. “In my trouble I cried out to the Lord;
and He heard me. O Lord, deliver my soul from wicked lips and a deceitful tongue” (Gradual).
Thus the liturgy wishes us to pray to the Savior, of whom Joseph is a figure.
“A householder . . . planted a vineyard, and made a hedge round about it, and dug in it a
press, and built a tower [for protection], and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a strange
country. And when the time of the fruit drew nigh, He sent his servants to the husbandmen
that they might receive the fruits thereof; and the husbandmen, laying hands on his servants,
beat one and killed another.” Again the householder sent other servants, who also were treated
cruelly. “Last of all he sent to them his son, saying: They will reverence my son. But the husbandmen,
seeing the son, said among themselves: This is the heir; come, let us kill him and we shall
have his inheritance. And taking him, they cast him forth out of the vineyard and killed him”
(Gospel). The householder is God, who sent His prophets and servants to His chosen people.
But Israel rejected the messengers whom He sent to them, and even stoned them and put them
to death. Then God sent his own divine Son. “He came unto His own, and his own received
Him not” ( Jn 1:11). Like Joseph, He is sold to his enemies by one of His own disciples for thirty
pieces of silver. He has rendered nothing but good to His people, but they reject Him as their
Savior, turn from Him, and shout to His judges, “Crucify Him; crucify Him. . . . His blood be
upon us and our children” (Lk 23:21; Mt 27:25). Betrayed, despised, disgraced, and burdened
with the curse of His people, He staggers painfully toward the heights of Calvary. There He will
be crucified and His blood will be shed. But on “the third day He shall rise again” (Mt 20:19).
“The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. By the Lord
this has been done and it is wonderful in our eyes” (Gospel).
Today we gather in the sanctuary of St. Vitalis, who, like Joseph, was thrown alive into a pit and
then covered with stones and earth. In this martyr Jesus continues His passion and death. In
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