Chapter 15: Good Friday

Suffering surrounds and consumes us. By giving it a structure, we give ourselves a cage to rattle. A place in which we contain it, analyze it, process it, release it. Every Lent is an opportunity to use the story of Christ's Passion to do just that. Each of us is capable of perceiving and feeling the totality of human suffering, just like Christ did. But we cannot carry that burden, as He did on the cross. Suffering is the condensation that evaporates into love.
Love surrounds and sometimes consumes us. Love is the story we all yearn for the most.

The Stations of the Cross

Station 1

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane...

We suffer alone, our solitary sacrifice. Love we receive from others is limited in scope and weakened by the flesh. Abandonment is inevitable. Our spirit is willing to accept the test, but to turn over our will to God means we must let go of our need for love from all others and receive the love of Christ. The deeper love we seek is not able to exist solely in another because it only exists in us if we first accept it in ourselves through Christ.

Station 2

Jesus, betrayed by Judas, is arrested...

Handed down through the hierarchies, fortified by weapons, casting edicts and prophecies, the kiss of death arrives. The love that betrays becomes the catalyst to condemnation. No resistance. Love punctuates and prompts the test; let the suffering ensue.

Station 3

Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin...

We are each born condemned to accept the death of our free will and relinquish it to the Lord. The ultimate act of free will is to turn over one's will to God, to surrender every and all modicum of control, to accept and bear the cross of our individual suffering.

Station 4

Jesus is denied by Peter...

Denial and rejection become instruments of torture. All behind the back, subversive, the weakness of the agenda of the flesh: to survive an impossible survival. Only God's will survives or even enjoys the potential of survival. Human will is transitory, ephemeral, detached from permanence, infused by Grace. Human survival is merely instrumental to God's will. God fully anticipates and expects that we will deny His will and try to superimpose our own for the sake of survival of our weakened flesh. He Graces us with the ability to weep bitterly at our inability to love Him purely and devotedly. He carries the burden of love's shortcomings in our suffering and through his own suffering at our rejection and denial of Him.

Station 5

Jesus is judged by Pilate

Accusations, answer avoidance, and accommodations. Pity for Pilate who parries to provide punishment. The mob must be fed. Jesus will not deny his Father. Pilate admires His loyalty and simultaneously succumbs to the pressure of the illusion that he has control over his own survival and releases Barrabas and hands over Jesus to the mob. Judgment and public betrayal. Judas and Pilate, two sides of the same coin.

Station 6

Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns...

Pilate took Jesus to be scourged. The soldiers wove his crown of thorns and mocked Him, hailing Him as King of the Jews. Leaders authorize the infliction of suffering to soldiers who indulge in orders received. Granting permission to make another suffer is equal to embracing that permission. When any of us asserts control over another's suffering we add to our own. When any of us confronts the source of our suffering, we extend the invitation to love.

Station 7

Jesus bears the cross...

Pilate found no guilt in Jesus; he only found guilt in himself. Guilt survives all attempts at its justification or annihilation by temporarily disguising itself in the veil of righteousness. Guilt awakens and ignites each layer of suffering and offers us the opportunity to access remorse. The moment the cross descended on Jesus' shoulders, human kind was redeemed. Pilate's guilt ignited that moment and thus we empathize with Pilate's pitiful position as the instigator of doom, who passed off responsibility in a futile attempt to survive his own guilt. Then the illusion of loyalty to a human king, Caesar, set the course for crucifixion.

Station 8

Jesus is helped by Simon the Cyrenian to carry the cross...

Simon, a passer by, is the lucky one. Just the chance to help anyone who is suffering to carry his cross, much less Christ, is the privilege of love and the transcendence of suffering. Christ's torturers are the ones who press Simon into service. Simon becomes the embodiment of not only their guilt and agenda to get Christ closer to crucifixion, but also of all acts of human compassion to come.

Station 9

Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem...

The wood is green when it is still connected to life, growth, essence. The wood is dry after death, decay, corruption. The women mourn prematurely and their lamentation is misdirected. Christ knows that he is the living embodiment of suffering and love. But long after His life and death, humans will inherit a despair so great they will wish the very life force out of them. They will seek death as a means of protection from a cursed life of a suffering they cannot transcend on their own. Because Christ is in a surrendered state to His suffering and is guided by the loving hand of His Father, he has no reason to mourn. He only has reason to offer advice to those whose generations of suffering have only just begun.

Station 10

Jesus is crucified...

Dry wood. Bone minus flesh. Golgotha. Skull. Flanked by criminals. The official sanctioning of forgiveness. Ignorance is from this moment forward a forgivable offense. What is it they did that they did not know they were doing? Condemning themselves for eternity by condemning one man to physical death? Releasing the elixir of love and suffering and fating it to become their legacy? Pressed into service by his Father, Jesus becomes like Simon, assigned to deliver compassion and love. An act of love amidst severe suffering is the greater act of love and the ultimate resolution of the suffering.

Station 11

Jesus promises his kingdom to the good thief...

Good thief, bad thief. Two sides of the same coin like Judas and Pilate. Both hang with Christ in condemnation, both capable of the same redemption. The good thief uses his guilt to receive and accept his suffering. The bad thief tries to score undeserved absolution and escape from suffering and death. The good thief is willing to die to purify his soul. The bad thief still wants to control his death and make a deal to extend his life. Fear of God, for the good thief, is the source of the fountain of humility.

Station 12

Jesus speaks to His mother and the disciple...

Passing off the lineage. Bonding and forging new family. Mother and son torn apart then united anew. Responsibility is exchanged and carried forth. The call to parent and to care for parents crystallized into family oaths forever. Suffering and death's last act is to love, care for, provide for those who live on.

Station 13

Jesus dies on the cross...

Three hours of darkness. An eclipse of the sun. The temple veil torn down the middle. Jesus cries out. His last breath breathed. Simultaneous to his last breath, the final sacrificial crying out: “Father, into Your Hands I commend my spirit.” The spirit is willing and the weakness of the flesh is transcended. Jesus' control of His free will is handed over to His Father. The willing spirit submits the human will. His spirit entrusted to the charge of His Father. Son gives the gift of love by sacrificing his free will to God. God returns the gift of love by ending His Son's suffering.

Station 14

Jesus is placed in the tomb...

Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man. In a fatherly act he went to claim Christ's body. Pilate, in a subconscious act of penance, handed over the body. Joseph covered it in a clean linen cloth and laid our Lord in the tomb, rolling a stone to seal the door and the deal. A rich man's simple linen became a treasure for all, a blank canvas upon which the remedy of suffering and love was fused. Grains of pollen drifted through the air and nestled themselves into the fibers, forever sealing time and location into the cloth. When wealth, blessing, abundance is shared, it grows and prospers. The sealed tomb becomes an incubator for salvation. The elixir of suffering and love is vaporized and melded in the risen Christ and humanity is graced by the gift of the imprint of His essence.

Our treasure of faith, this simple piece of cloth...