G
ood Friday. The day everything gets turned upside down. The name of the day itself is a remarkable explication of the Christian attitude -- the day that God died, when all seemed to be lost, is the Good Day. The day of defeat is turned, after the fact, into the day of utmost triumph. Today, in the liturgy, we sing the Dulce Lignum, the Sweet Wood, calling out our praises to the weapon of torture that killed our Lord. It would be the most natural thing in the world to curse the weapons that were used to rend the flesh of our Savior. But we Christians instead exult them -- for He turned those very weapons into the instruments of salvation. We lift the Cross, the Nails, up on high, for it turned out they were what we needed all along.
Bless those that persecute you, and turn the other cheek. Every day, we are smote with crosses and nails, usually much less literal, and less outrageous to our bodies than those that Jesus suffered. Will we curse these burdens? Or can we, like our Lord, turn them to Heaven, and see that they are just as sweet, just as necessary for us, as the cruel assaults we inflicted upon the Body of God?
Tomorrow is the Day of the Grave, when the world held its breath, and the faithful lost faith, believing themselves alone and abandoned. A day of death, a day of weeping. And then?