Good Friday

By Br Albert Robertson | The events of Good Friday should leave us desolate. To truly enter into the events of Good Friday, even though we know the good news of the Resurrection of Our Lord from the dead, we must feel something of that desolation experienced by the disciples that first Easter, when all seemed lost.

The events of Good Friday should leave us desolate. To truly enter into the events of Good Friday, even though we know the good news of the Resurrection of Our Lord from the dead, we must feel something of that desolation experienced by the disciples that first Easter, when all seemed lost. Sometimes this can be quite difficult to do, but in my noviciate I found the words of St Vincent Ferrer particularly helpful. At the beginning of each of his sermons he invites the faithful to recite the Hail Mary, but on Good Friday, he says, such a prayer is not possible. One does not greet a grief-stricken person, a person overwhelmed with sorrows, with joy, and so St Vincent suggests to even try to greet her in this way would only adds to her grief. For if we say, Hail Mary, she will ask why we greet her in such a joyful way. If we say, The Lord is with thee, she would say that her Lord is not with her, for He has been taken away and crucified. If we say, Blessed art thou, she would ask how we can call her blessed when all are cursing her.

We can enter more fully into the desolation of the Cross when we see the death of Christ through the eyes of His blessed mother who held his body in her arms, not in the joyful wonder of Bethlehem, but in the grief of Golgotha. There is something particular in the grief felt by a mother for their child, and we see it so often that the sin of the world may have blunted even this most privileged insight. But perhaps this Good Friday we can enter once again into this desolation, seeing the grief of our blessed mother, with the humble realisation that it was caused by our own sin.