Somehow, everyone kept breathing, even as You gave up your spirit.
On a day that should have resulted in the end of everything, much of the world didn't even take note. People had their own problems, their own hopes, their own lives.
Isn't it so utterly mysterious? Today we celebrate what was humanity's most tragic moment, when we looked at God-become-man and spat in Your face as You longed to redeem and love us back to life. Even on an earthly level, we condemned an innocent man to death and abandoned him.
Not all. Not all abandoned You. The women devoted to You were there - all of them. John, the beloved disciple, was there. Simon of Cyrene - even if he was conscripted - still faithfully bore Your cross and eased the journey up to Calvary. But most of us turned against You.
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And yet You died for them. For all. For each of us. Your devotion to us was total, and as You hung from the tree You offered Yourself entirely to us.
That tree. I would want to curse it, if it weren't such a beautiful gift. You deserved better - infinitely better - and yet You embraced it, knowing all that would come because of it.
I would want to take Your place. Or ease Your suffering. Or find another way, a better way, so You could continue living. You, whose life was most precious. Come down from the Cross, Lord. How could anything good possibly come of this moment happening this way to You? It is so easy to see only the finality to death, forgetting the resurrection.
But we know how that would have gone. Get behind me, Satan, You said to Peter when he made the same offer. You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.
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We have thousands of doctors, nurses, surgeons, and others who are living their own Good Fridays today. Offering their lives for the sake of their patients, selflessly giving up everything for the sake of the other. Thousands of people will die today, many of them alone or abandoned. They have borne our infirmities and carried our diseases. To see the gift of their lives as only a tragedy (which it certainly is) would be a mistake. There is so much life that will grow from these sacrifices.
If this world is all there is - if this earthly life is all there is - the Cross is senseless. Suffering and death are meaningless. There would be no reason to endure any of it, no ultimate purpose besides the ugliness.
Your vision is different. If the ultimate purpose of life is love, which is to say death to self, the Cross is everything. The greater the Cross, the greater the opportunity for love. The more suffering endured, the more we can find ourselves seeking God and faithfully uniting ourselves with You, who suffered most.
This is how we find true life, You tell us, in marrying ourselves to You. Just as You offer us everything - all that You are, and all that You have - we do the same in return. We find life in giving ourselves away, just as You did.
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