A few hours more,

A few minutes more,

A few instants more,

For thirty-three years it has been going on.

For thirty-three years you have lived fully minute after minute.

You can no longer escape, now; you are there, 

    at the end of your life, at the end of your road.

You are at the last extremity, at the edge of a precipice.

You must take the last step,

The last step of love,

The last step of life that ends in death.

 

You hesitate.

Three hours are long, three hours of agony;

Longer than three years of life,

Longer than thirty years of life.

 

You must decide, Lord, all is ready around you.

You are there, motionless, on your Cross.

You have renounced all activity other than embracing these 

    crossed planks for which you were made.

And yet, there is still life in your nailed body.

Let mortal flesh die, and make way for eternity.

Now, life slips from each limb, one by one, finding refuge in his 

    still beating heart.

Immeasurable heart,

Overflowing heart.

Heart heavy as the world, the world of sins and miseries that it bears.

 

Lord, one more effort.

Mankind is there, waiting unknowingly for the cry of its Saviour.

You brothers are there; they need you.

Your Father bends over you, already holding out his arms.

Lord, save us,

Save us.

 

See.

He has taken his heavy heart,

And,

Slowly,

Laboriously,

Alone between heaven and earth,

In the awesome night,

With passionate love,

He has gathered his life,

He has gathered the sin of the world,

And in a cry,

He has given all.

‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.’

 

Christ has just died for us.

 

Michel Quoist, 1918 – 1997, French Catholic priest and writer 

 

_____________________________

 

 

It was now about the sixth hour,

    and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, 

    while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 

Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, 

    “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” 

And having said this he breathed his last.