It seems like it was just Christmas and I was just marveling over the love of Christ who was born a helpless, human baby. Then, suddenly, it was Ash Wednesday, and I was receiving ashes on my forehead as a reminder of my humanity. Now it is Good Friday once again, and I am sitting in my little living room, listening to the rain fall outside of my window and reflecting on the Passion and Death of Christ and his supreme love."There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends."
This has been one of my favorite passages from the Bible for a long time. It is such a beautiful idea. Today it takes on a new meaning. Every year I come to a deeper understanding of Good Friday. Every year it takes on a new meaning for me.
Christ died for us. I cannot stop thinking about that. This year especially it has been haunting me. He loved us so much that he laid down his life for us. And we did not even act as friends towards him. How much greater must that love be that he would give up his life in such a horrible way when we had abandoned him. When I think about this love, I am overcome. I want to love God more; I want to love him as much as he loves me.
Going back to a retreat from my senior year at college, the speaker, Fr. McAlpin said, "We did not only kill a God; we killed God. But he died for us. We killed him and he suffered it for us." I cannot stop thinking about that. Even though we spit on him and killed him, he did not send down fire and brimstone to destroy us. No, he spread out his arms on the cross, embracing and gathering us into his great love. Even though we continue to spit on him and despise him, he still continues to hold out his arms to us.
When I think about my faith, I think about it as one of great joy. I am not emotionally religious. It is more internal for me. Joy for me is not a shallow, sappy feeling. Those people who depict Christ in such sappy ways give me such a cloying feeling. They have it all wrong. Joy is strength. Joy is Christ dying on the Cross. There is nothing sappy or sentimental about dying on a cross. Joy is the love that is not little red hearts. Joy is the beauty of the Deep Heavens, the way C.S. Lewis talks about what lies beyond our world. The way the Eastern Church depicts Christ is how I see him: not as a bearded lady stuck on everything that we feel like, from necklaces and t-shirts to holy cards and bumper stickers. Not that, but a strong, almost heroic God who loves us in a way that is not shallow or sappy. It is the kind of joy that you get from the end of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, after you have struggled through the depths and finally emerged, triumphant, into the light.
That is the Passion and Death of Christ. That is love. It is still with us, even amidst the concrete and plastic of our world.
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A drop of blood upon each rose;
Its snowy heart turned crimson red.
A thorn pierced deep into its side,
A worm upon its bended back.
I lost my way upon the streets,
That endless concrete sea of houses.
Endless plastic, falsely lit
In light without a source.
And what is love? the ancients cried
And sought the turning stars in vain
While kings for glory strove to die
And queens wept for the day.
The asphalt meadows, fields of rock,
Showed not a footprint, not a sound.
His light was dimmed and thrown away
To rest within a garbage heap.
Oh, where is love? the moderns scoff.
In bottled essence, plastic hearts.
A dropperful applied each day,
Administered by those who know.
The rose is growing higher still;
Its crimson petals brush the sky.
Its thorns pierce out a piece of night
And let the starlight in.
A drop of red, a prick of blood,
Fallen in the whitewashed street.
There he is standing; there he stays
Amid the concrete trees.
