Good Friday 2026
Welcome to all who have gathered in St Mary’s Cathedral and online to pray on this Good Friday afternoon.
We have just listened to the singing of the Passion according to St John. We stand now in the shadow of the Cross, giving thanks for the redemption won for us on the hill of Calvary two thousand years ago.
You may have seen images of Rodin’s famous sculpture The Thinker. It is often used to symbolise philosophy, reflection, the life of the mind. But that is not really what Rodin intended.
The figure of The Thinker is not serene. He is bent in upon himself. His body is tense, twisted. His eyes are closed, shut off from the world. Even his toes are curled in discomfort. And most importantly, this sculpture is only one part of something much larger. The Thinker sits above Rodin’s great work, The Gates of Hell, inspired by Dante’s Inferno.
Perched above those gates, the Thinker represents humanity turned inward, absorbed, locked within itself. He presides over all that leads to ruin: selfishness, isolation, the refusal to love.
It is a powerful image. And, if we are honest, it can be uncomfortably familiar.
But today, Good Friday, we are invited to contemplate something very different.
The prophet Isaiah tells us that the suffering servant was “without beauty, without majesty… a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering.” We heard it again just moments ago: people turned their faces away. There was nothing attractive in him. Nothing that would draw us in.
And yet—we are here.
We are drawn in.
We come forward to venerate the Cross. We gaze upon what appears to be defeat, brutality, disfigurement—and we recognise something else. Something deeper. Something that the world cannot easily see.
Because on this day, beauty is hidden within suffering.
On Calvary, ugliness and beauty meet. Violence and love collide. Sin and mercy converge. And what emerges is not despair—but redemption.
Rodin’s Thinker sits above the gates of hell, turned in on himself.
Christ hangs upon the Cross, not closed, but open.
His arms are stretched wide—not in tension, but in gift.
Not in self-absorption, but in self-giving.
Not grasping—but surrendering.
The Thinker contemplates himself.
Christ gives himself.
The Thinker is trapped within his own thoughts.
Christ entrusts himself entirely to the will of the Father.
The Thinker sits above the gates of hell.
Christ opens for us the gates of heaven.
This is the great reversal at the heart of Good Friday:
that what looks like failure becomes victory, what appears to be weakness becomes strength, and death becomes life.
“Through his wounds we are healed.”
Those words are not poetic exaggeration. They are the deepest truth of our faith.
Because every wound we carry—every sin, every sorrow, every betrayal, every fear—has been taken up into the body of Christ. Nothing is left outside his love. Nothing is beyond his reach.
And so today, we do not turn away. We look. We stay. We venerate.
We allow ourselves to be drawn into the mystery of the Cross—not as spectators, but as participants. Not as distant observers, but as those who know that this was done for us.
Every so often, an Australian gallery will host Rodin’s Thinker, and people will line up to see it and perhaps to reflect on the human condition.
But today, on Good Friday, we are called to host something far greater.
To receive into our hearts the mystery of the Cross: its brutality and its beauty, its wounds and its wonder, its sorrow and its saving power.
We are invited to look upon Christ crucified—and like the centurion, to see what others could not see.
To see, in the moment of Christ’s death, the revelation of divine love and to say with conviction:
“Truly, this is the Son of God.”
Most Rev. Anthony J. Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
3 April 2026