The Horror of Good Friday
Beloved in Christ,
Today is the second day of the Paschal Triduum, the three most Holy Days in the Christian liturgical year.
And today is, perhaps, the most somber and solemn of the three. It is Good Friday, the day of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and death.
Culturally, I think that the crucifixion has been normalized.
Crosses are worn, glinting and swinging, around the neck. Or perhaps, ironically, pierced into ears, or rolled onto the fingers as a ring.
Even in Churches, including our own, Christ on the Cross is a normalized sight, meaning that we see a statue of Him above the High Altar every Sunday. And we don’t frequently think much of it.
Yet it is the imperial device of cruel torture that was used to kill God incarnate.
It is the device by which creation killed its creator.
To meditate and contemplate on the cosmic horror of this reality is, to say the very least, heartbreaking. And, I think, profoundly worthy of our contemplation.
Violence has been normalized in our culture, too. Extinguished lives are reported to us as statistics and numbers chronically rolling on a 24/7 news cycle which captures an overwhelming scale of devastation that we humans seem to never stop being capable of doing to one another.
The worst part is, this overwhelm is only a small fraction of the reality of what our fallen world experiences day by day.
To contemplate the crucifixion is to contemplate the sin-ridden, broken world we exist in.
It is to soften our heartened hearts to the reality that people made in the image of God suffer like our Lord who is God incarnate. And that even God as Christ suffered at the hands of humanity, too.
It is to be moved to pity, and to cry out to the Lord, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken… us.”
Today is a day of desolation.
Music can, at times, help me experience something normalized in a new way.
John Taverner composed a haunting musical piece depicting Mary’s experience of the crucifixion, which always shocks me and breaks my heart as I contemplate the crucifixion. I commend this piece of music to you.
The song is called, The Lament of the Mother of God. You can find it here.
I pray that this day proves a day of deep contemplation and prayer for you, as we look ever toward the resurrection of Christ.
Yours in Christ,
Alex+