Emptiness.
The Good Friday service is always the strangest in the year. It’s the only day of the year when mass is not celebrated. The church is empty; empty of all decoration, empty of nearly all music except the most sorrowful, almost empty of people who are a little more like ghosts coming quietly and leaving quietly. This year that emptiness is greater because we are locked in our own space. We are alone and cut off.
We hear again of the terrible torment that Jesus went through for us, for our sake. This year we maybe also think of all those others who struggle for their last breath as a virus fills their lungs with fluid. It’s a horrible, frightening thought. The crucifixion has always been horrible and frightening, but in this time maybe it feels like a closer reality for us
This year we have to hold on to the knowledge that just as Jesus was not alone, we are not alone. The Father did not stop his death. No He wasn’t going to send legions of angels. And He doesn’t stop the many deaths we have around us now. Our human existence has always included death, many very horrible and sometimes in huge numbers. But what Jesus taught, and finally proved, was that death is not what we fear it to be. Yes it can be horrible, unexpected, lonely, apparently random, unfair, all that and more. But it is not an end.
Every year we come close to this one death, the death of Jesus. Every year we confront what that means, for us and for all of humanity. This year we may feel overwhelmed by the sense of death all around. But it is not an end. There is a resurrection coming. We don’t know when, we don’t know how, others will die, but there is a resurrection coming.
We wait in emptiness, in patience, in hope, in the sure knowledge that our Father loves us. It is not an end