Good Friday sermon

One time, I spoke with a priest who served in a ministry connected to a juvenile detention centre in Korea. It was run by the Salesian society, a catholic religious group, founded to care for troubled youth. Their ministry was mainly giving them not only care and supervision but also practical training to become carpenters and electricians.

He said that when he began the ministry decades ago, there were hardly any staff or resources. As he shared a few stories, I could not imagine how he managed to sustain the ministry. Most of the boys were rebellious, unfocused, and unmotivated, causing trouble both inside and outside the community. It made sense since most of the boys had grown up amid chaos, without parental guidance, affection, or stability. Many were neglected or abandoned, even by their own parents.

In a way, their misbehavior was partly due to their bad choices and habits, but in another way, even when something good was offered, they were reluctant to receive it. They tested and resisted, trying to prove that love would not last. Their closest relationships had failed them, and it was frightening to trust again. I thought even caring for one of them would have been a challenge, but there were so many who needed help.

He said that through it all, he kept one thing in his mind: “Love them,” he said, “until they know they are loved and they are lovable.”

These young men were not easy to love. But he persisted with patience, with exhaustion, with hope. He felt constantly drained, juggling their needs, running around to collect donations, trying to hold the ministry together and, most of all, refusing to lose faith in each one of them. He told me that on some nights, he was so exhausted that he had to pull his car over just to rest for a few minutes before continuing on.

Years later, when the ministry became more stable with better staff, funding, and structure, he still looked back and said, “Those were the best years of my life.” Because in those struggles, he learned what it truly means to love with nothing left to give and to trust that God was working even in his weakness.

Love is not sentimental. Love is not comfortable. Real love means putting others before your own wants, your own comfort, even your own needs. And when we walk this path, the path of self-giving love, our suffering is never meaningless. It becomes part of something larger; it is joined to the suffering of Christ.

On this Good Friday, we gaze upon the Cross and see the fullness of love: Jesus, who chose our salvation over his comfort, our life over his own. Through that love, suffering is transformed. It no longer ends in despair, but in hope. “Love them until they know they are loved and they are lovable.” Jesus lived and died as the embodiment of that love. Through his life and death, we are given new life in him.

As followers of Jesus Christ, let us remember: true love is not a reward for those who deserve it. It is a gift for those who need it most. It always risks uncertainty and suffering, but when it is rooted in Christ, it endures because we know that love by receiving it. It continues until it is completed in us and begins anew in others.

Fr. James

That is the mystery we hold today at the foot of the Cross, where love meets pain, and pain gives way to hope. The Cross is not the end of love; it is where love begins again.