So who is this Jimmy Kimmel, some kind of dog food? You can join the popular grassroots movement to boycott racist, MillSoc, Melania hating Kimmel here, if you haven't already. Along with 196 thousand others and climbing.
Carry on,
LSP
You have the cross rising there, gaunt, black, solitary. But unless on the other side of the river you have the resurrection, no bridge will ever be thrown across the gulf, and the cross remains dead, being alone. You must have a resurrection to explain the cross, and then the life and the death tower up into the manifestation of God in the flesh and the propitiation for our sins. Without it, we have nothing to preach which is worth calling the gospel.
If he whom we believed to be our sacrifice by his death and our sanctification by his life has not risen, then all which makes his death other than a martyr's vanishes, and with it vanish forgiveness and purifying. Only when we recognize that in his cross explained by his resurrection we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and by the communion of the risen life from the risen Lord possess that new nature which sets us free from the dominion of our evil. Then is faith operative in setting us free from our sins.
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
Human wickedness will raise itself in pride and claim to be "as God," but that is devilish delusion. God is not touched unless he will it so to be.
We bear in mind today the weight of human wickedness, that reckless pride which rises up against the holiness of God and the order of his universe. But that is not what is first and most important in the mystery of the love of God, who freely wills our woes to touch his heart, who freely gives himself against our sins, in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That is the mystery of this day, and that is why we call this Friday "Good." We celebrate the mystery of the love of God: that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Begotten Son." (John 3.16) That is love unthinkable, utterly unmerited, beyond all possible expectation.
Our task today is nothing other than the contemplation of that mystery of love. It is to fix our minds and hearts upon the passion and the dying of the Son of God. That is, in a way, the whole task of our discipleship. Christians often ask for detailed recipes for Christian life, solutions to all sorts of problems, great and small, and ways for dealing with our sins. All that is understandable. But in the end, there is only one answer to all of this: we must gaze upon the charity of God in Christ. The charity of God must be our food and drink. That is now our duty: to look upon the crucified, and that must become also our delight. We must be transformed by that renewal of our mind, so charity becomes the very substance of our souls.
We are friends of God, because his grace makes us so. He makes us god-like, and grants us the equality of friends, the proportional equality of sons. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." (1 John 3.1)
That is the friendship which Christians call "charity," the very bond of peace and of all virtues. It is the friendship which binds us to God, and unites us to one another in the new commandment of love, "Fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." (Ephesians 2.19) And as friends, we must do as friends do: we delight in God's presence, we rejoice in our conversation with him, and find comfort in his consolations. As friends we care for all that is his. We seek to do his will as free men, not as slaves. "For we are in love," says St. Thomas, "and it is from love we act, not from servile fear."