Good Friday: Cross of Hope

Mount Davidson Cross, San Francisco Photo Credit: Daniel Ramirez

"Good Friday: day of the cross, day of suffering, day of hope, day of abandonment, day of victory, day of mourning, day of joy, day of endings, day of beginnings...

I closed my eyes and could see his sacred body...I saw the immense suffering of humanity during the centuries:
people killing each other;
people dying from starvation and epidemics;
people driven from their homes;
people sleeping on the streets of large cities;
people clinging to each other in desperation;
people flagellated, tortured, burned, mutilated;
people alone in locked flats, in prison dungeons, in labor camps;
people craving a gentle word, a friendly letter, a consoling embrace,
people...all crying out with an anguished voice,
'My God, my God, why have your forsaken us?'...

Then with my minds' eye I saw a large crowd of isolate, agonizing individuals walking away from the cross together, bound by the love they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own lips. The cross of horror became the cross of hope, the tortured body became the body that gives new life; the gaping wound became the source of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation." 

-Henri Nouwen, Show Me the Way: Daily Lenten Readings