Why are we here? It’s a good question, an ancient question too.

For me, Saint Augustine thought about it the best. What happens every year as we gather together over these three holy days? he asked. Does Christ die again? Does he die as often as we reenact his death? Or, are we here simply to recall his death? “No,” he said; “the yearly remembrance brings before our eyes…what once happened long ago and stirs in us the same emotions as if we beheld our Lord hanging upon the cross; not in mockery, of course, but as believers.”[1] That is why we are here; we are believers. We have come here not simply to remember the death of Jesus, but to feel it too. Because that’s what believers do, they feel it, the pain of this death.

For this there is a perfectly human explanation. To see those we love in pain, to feel as much as we can with them and for them: that is real love. For those we say we love, not to feel is not really to love. What mother is so coldhearted not to feel her child’s pain? What lover is so untrue not to hurt when his or her beloved hurts. To refuse that compassion, to not share pain, to not want to share pain is to be without love. When we are hurt, when we are wounded, we want to be seen. We want, at the very least, those we love to see our pain. We’re shocked by the passerby who ignores the hapless victim. We know that to see someone in pain, to acknowledge it, to honor it, to assuage it, to serve it: we know that that is human, that it’s love. That, before anything, is why we’re here, because of that human thing we call compassion. All those who saw him “returned home beating their breasts,” Luke writes; but the disciples remained, stunned and at a distance.[2] Numb love kept them there. I recall always on Good Friday, Saint John Henry Newman’s haunting words which he preached to his people. “I can understand,” he said, “people who do not keep Good Friday at all; they are indeed ungrateful, but I know what they mean; I understand them. But I do not understand at all, I do not at all see what men mean who do profess to keep it, yet do not sorrow, or at least try to sorrow.”[3] That is why we are here; we are humans, and because we know, as disciples, what love requires. To see, to feel, and to stay.

But there is too something mystical about it, about why we are here. And that’s to look upon him whom they pierced, as Zechariah prophesied.[4] Some will see him and remain wicked; let the wicked be wicked still in this valley of tears: that’s what John heard at the end of the Apocalypse.[5] Seeing the Crucified, you understand, is a moment of spiritual crisis, of spiritual decision, of spiritual judgment. Some will succeed, some won’t. Unmoved, heart hardened, will you mock? Will you ignore? Will you remain unchanged? Or, heart touched by the Spirit, will you see in the Crucified the love and revelation of God? Will you see and enter the kingdom of God? That’s what he was saying to Nicodemus, which Nicodemus didn’t understand, that when the Son of Man is lifted up, everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.[6] That’s what he meant when he said that when the Son of Man is lifted up, “you will realize that I AM.”[7] What we are doing here is more than mere compassion. It’s salvation. It is a chance, very strangely, to see God; this is what God looks like when we have had our way with him, what his love looks like when he’s had his way with us. That’s what we are meant to see: God, pure love bloodied by pure hatred, by you and me; to see it and to be sorry and to want his love again.

But what else does it mean? Like our sisters and brothers in faith, those before us and those after us, we come here out of love and for the saving mystery of it, to look upon the Crucified and to be saved. We do what Christians do on Good Friday. But is there more?

For me, I have been meditating upon the deposition of Christ, his descent from the Cross, that moment the Lord is taken down, placed in the arms of his Mother. I’ve been thinking of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and the entombment of Jesus. A moment of tremendous sadness, excruciating sadness, with, I assume, little thought of resurrection—with no anticipation of Easter as we have—what must it have been like? What must it have been like to wonder what to do with that sadness, what to do with that death? Again, it must have been excruciating, holding death in your arms, wondering what to do next. I have been contemplating that moment, that pain: growing numb, knowing only the comfort that at least the suffering is over. It has made me think about my own sadness, our sadness, my pain, our pain, and the deaths we mourn.

What do we do with them? What do we do with the deaths we experience in our lives? What do we do with the deaths of loved ones? The stillborn babe, my aged mother, my wife, my husband, my father, my sister, my lover: What do we do with these deaths? What do we do with this pain and this sadness? What do we do with the death of a friendship, the death of a marriage? What do we do with the death of what we’ve known, those humble little comforts which made for the sweetness and sanity of our lives? What do we do with all this? What do we do when, for some of us, this past year has been like holding death, or at least sadness, in our arms? I don’t think there’s much mystery why I’ve been drawn to meditate on this moment; for some of us, in these Stations of the Cross of our lives, it seems we’re stuck on the last two. Holding all this sadness in our arms and our hearts, what do we do? This Good Friday what word is there about this for us?

I’m afraid the answer to this question is not easy. There is no gimmick that can fix it, no drink to down it all away. There is no sentimentality strong enough to make it all better, to make sense of the senseless. Words here, however, well-meant can do very little. All one can do, really, is hold on to it, that sadness and pain, and even that death. Like Mary, holding onto her Son, sometimes you just have to hold death in your arms, silently, lovingly. Again, that is what’s human. To be with someone in pain, to attend to suffering, to the dying, one needn’t say much at all; one simply needs to be present, to remain. This is what we must do with this sadness in our arms: we must continue to hold it. Because that’s what love requires; that’s what loving people do.

It’s just that now—because we have been here—we know what, someday, will happen to this sadness. That our tears will be wiped away in that place where it all will be turned into joy, beginning on that early morning just a little ways off. When she saw him, because she was there, because she had stayed with the sadness. Because that’s what love required. Amen.

[1] Augustine, Enarr. on Ps. 21.1

[2] Luke 23:48-49

[3] John Henry Newman, “The Crucifixion,” Parochial and Plain Sermons 7.10.3

[4] Zechariah 12:10

[5] Revelation 22:11

[6] John 3:14

[7] John 8:28

© 2021 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield