Prayer on Good Friday.

Which isn’t good at all.

One of the great misnomers of all time.

It’s bleak, haunted, immensely sad.

It rivets and ravages me every year 

    as I sit hidden behind a post-beam

    in the balcony of the chapel,

    where no one can see me weeping

    at the poor broken Yeshua,

    betrayed by his best friends,

    beaten by sneering cops,

    blood dripping into His eyes,

    grilled by a police chief who couldn’t care less

        about justice and mercy and only wants to evade blame

        for a matter he considers minor at best.

 

Yet it wasn’t minor at all,

     and somehow it turns on that harrowing day long ago.

A mysterious young man from a country village,

    causing an epic political and civil ruckus in the city.

A murderous mob, angry religious Brahmins, potential colonial unrest

    that will not look good at headquarters.

Gnomic answers by the calm young man when interrogated.

Poor Peter bitterly berating himself for his cowardice,

    and which one of us would have done better?

The apostles frightened, the sound of hammers 

    nailing the young man to a cross,

    the lowering darkness, 

    the murmurs of fear through the city as the sun is blotted out.

Veronica’s veil and Simon’s shoulders, Simon the African,

    did compassion surge and make him step forth,

    or was he shoved into legend by a soldier?

 

The gaunt young man sagging toward death; 

    His quiet blessing of a thief;

    His last words to his mother;

        one last desperate cry;

    He thirsts, He prays, He dies.

 

And in the chapel not another word, not another sound;

    and soon we exit silently, and go our ways,

    for once without the tang of Euchaist on our tongues,

    for once without a cheerful chaff for friends and handshakes all round;

    and no matter how bright the rest of the day,

        how brilliant the late afternoon, 

        how redolent the new flowers,

        how wild the sunset over the river

    you shiver a little; not just for Him, but for all of us,

    His children, face to face with despair.

And so silently home to pray for light emerging miraculously

    where it seemed all dark.

And so: amen.

 

Brian Doyle, 1956 – 2017, Catholic author from Oregon
A Book of Uncommon Prayer
____________________________
 

 

It was now about noon, 

    and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon,

    for the sun stopped shining. 

And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 

Jesus called out with a loud voice, 

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

When he had said this, he breathed his last.