THE TRUTH OF GOOD FRIDAY

"The high-stakes game is different from the more common one, because love is different from niceness and because truth is different from “my truth.” The point of understanding the real stakes of the game is not to improve our manners or even our public morality, much less to reform the state of our political affairs and our democratic discourse. All of those improvements may be worthy and desirable, and they may follow naturally from that understanding, but they are only subordinate ends. The truth is not the truth because it makes us better citizens — the truth is the truth because it is the truth. And the truth of Good Friday is this: The Cross is not the end of the story, but there is no way to the Resurrection except through it. If that is your starting point, then there are still many directions you can go from there, but all your possible paths lead back to the same place. It is a world that has a center." Kevin Williamson

THE CHRIST OF "I THIRST"

"On Good Friday, Jesus is the epitome of what we call the disabled. He sought meager help, minuscule aid. He did not plead, “Save me.” He did not cry out, “Help me get me down from here.” He simply asked for a drink, a sip, to alleviate his thirst — likely the least of his sufferings.

"Do something about it? Removed from the scene by centuries, free from the chaos and violence and the surging fury under Jerusalem’s blackening skies, we might very well imagine — indeed, I would have given Him water! Yes, and Peter did not deny. Alas, this was a day of rejection, complete and ultimate.

"But not eternal. In the here and now, we should harbor no fantasies: Our chance to directly respond to the Christ of I thirst . . . never was. Nor would it have been if we had been present on that hill. But we should realize the opportunities exist, in abundance, now.

"For is not the suffering Savior reflected in the neighbor accustomed to infirmity, in that man who we hold in no esteem, in that woman from whom we turn away, in the relative rejected and the colleague despised? Our crucified Christ is very much present.

"And He still thirsts. We are afforded this miraculous opportunity appease it, by wetting the lips of the pleaful, by showing the troubled and the plagued actual charity, in whatever way a cup of water reveals itself. That you do unto me.

"There are many recurring, persistent, instructive, and echoing phenomena that resound from the Praetorium to the Arimathean’s tomb, connecting Christians in the most intimate ways to the crucifixion and death of Jesus. It may indeed be a true miracle, as we approach two millennia from that very real and altering day, that He affords us, here and now, the chance to do right by Him — the Son of God who suffered atop the Place of the Skull — to engage in what can be nothing less than a redemptive act. To slake His thirst in His torment.

"One day as you pass by the way, someone suffering will call out, I thirst. On that day, remember this day, Good Friday. Stop and offer cool water." Jack Fowler

MY CONSOLATION

"It is all the unexpected people who come through. Simeon of Cyrene would have been the innocent brunch-goer, and the Romans dragoon him into Christ’s Passion, giving him an honor every human on earth should have desired. It is the Roman soldier, a hired killer and oppressor, not the chief priest, who recognizes the Son of God. It is everyone who, in normal times, would marvel, or envy, or be simply confounded by the devotion of God’s people — His regular churchgoers — who prove themselves worthy. And it is the nominally devout who betray and deny and run away. Although we go to church to become holy, it is the liturgy itself which reveals us for what we really are in God’s sight.

"And that, I must take as my consolation. It is the Christian belief that the liturgy is not just the actions of believers in a Church, but God’s action on us. And, that, whatever the condition of my mind and heart, this great action rescues me from that modern slipstream of the self-consciousness, even my own mediocre, suburban dad life. Because, if left only in my mind, I would lose myself entirely, a subject knowing himself only subjectively. But in the liturgy of the Church, if it is God’s action, He is objective reality, and I become known and recognized there. My toddler squirms and yawns in my arms, and my mind drifts from one triviality to another. I do not have “a firm, resolute, ready, active will, prepared to do whatsoever,” only the knowledge that I need Mercy for not having it, and His help to one day desire it, even if presently I fear such ready will would burn away everything I’ve spent my life building. But the bell rings, my knee bends, and my lips, despite everything, confess that the crucified man is My Lord and My God." Michael Brendan Dougherty