Contemplative Focus
Good Friday
“All this I tell you that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete” John 15.
Good Friday is a day when we venerate the cross of Jesus Christ.
What does it mean to venerate the cross?
Perhaps simply by stopping, by pausing, by not rushing past, by noticing.
Perhaps it is in the simple act of being with – being with the One who suffers.
In our willingness to pause, to notice, to witness the sufferings of Jesus, we honor his sacrifice, and we express our regret.
None of us were in Jerusalem with Jesus at the time of his death. But today we are witnesses to the suffering of the BODY OF CHRIST all over the world. We find it:
- · In our own community of faith – among those present in our chapel, in our families and co-workers.
- · In our own city – among the employed as well as the unemployed, in the homeless and the well-to-do, among the healthy and the sick, in the face of the dying and those who mourn the loss of loved ones.
- · In our world – in the people of Japan, in the people of Libya, in the people in our own country devastated by hurricanes, floods and droughts.
Let us venerate the cross of Jesus. But let us also venerate the cross of those who suffer today.
Let us stop, let us pause, let us notice and let us re-commit ourselves (as Mary did) to standing in deep compassion with the One who suffers...no matter their race, their creed, their sexual orientation...
For the One who suffers is Jesus.
Sr. Claire Sokol, O.C.D.
Reno Carmel
