The seven last words making that Friday Good

the Word made flesh

The “seven last words” are phrases Jesus uttered on the Cross as recorded in the four gospels. Taken as a whole they express Jesus’ total identification with humankind, thus indicating the full extent signified in that densely rich phrase of the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel regarding Jesus becoming one with us in our human condition of sheer weakness: “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”

 Because that day of his dying is God’s Day of showing the Good News of his Goodness, that Friday was made Good. The Anglican priest-poem George Herbert sums up the mystery of the divine merciful Goodness of God’s Love articulated in the Incarnation: “The Word is all / If we could spell.”

 Jesus’ seven words on the Cross have been seen by some authors in relation to the seven days of creation recounted in the Book of Genesis (cf. Gen 1:1-24). The number seven from the time of the Fathers of the Church has been regarded as symbolic of Christian perfection: “God creating the world in seven days... the seven deadly sins; the seven virtues... last words of Christ from the Cross; the seven seals of the Apocalypse etc.” (Stephen Costello, Hermeneutics and the Psychoanalysis of Religion, p.212.) In the end as in the beginning there is ultimately only one word, God’s creative Word of Merciful Love, which is summed up entirely in Jesus Christ’s whole life and death and resurrection that brings about the New Creation, as depicted in the splendid Mosaic in the apse of the Church of St Clement in Rome.