Brian’s Reflection: Friday, March 21, 2008 (Good Friday)


Expect to have hope rekindled.
Expect your prayers to be answered
in wondrous ways. The dry seasons
in life do not last. The spring rains
will come again.

- Sarah Ban Breathnach


I have “celebrated” Good Friday in many places around the World. On miserable, dark, cold days in New York or Toronto. Walking a ridge from a California monastery to a large cross, the sun bright and warm, the hills ablaze with blooming ice plant. In heavy vestments inappropriate to the tropics, dripping with perspiration, in the Nicaraguan rain forest. In many Episcopal churches I have served, small and smaller, with usually a clutch of faithful parishioners. One year on sabbatical in the duomo in Sienna, around a huge Italian crucifix dripping with blood, a choir of nuns in cream-coloured habits and black veils, singing some ethereal ancient Latin plainsong wail.

I’ve done this now for over 40 years, 35 as a priest. Listening to the Passion Gospel being read. Remembering Maundy Thursday, Jesus infusing the Passover Story of His people with a deeply personal, astonishing significance (“This is My Body, this is My blood”), lovingly washing His disciples’ feet. Venerating the Cross that assists Jesus on His path to giving His life in love. Pondering death. Thinking of the strange emptiness of Saturday. Then the empty tomb - resurrection.

Having “gone through” the Triduum and Easter for decades now, the truth has settled in.

This is the way Life is. This is what the grand design of Life is. Death and Life and Waiting. Dry seasons and spring rains. All the seasons have to be fully entered into and lived out. No season is without gifts.

For some, the dry seasons overwhelm, dominate. For those of us who understand Life, the “spring rains” come again. We expect the “deaths” and do not despair. We expect hope and wonder. Daily dying and rising is the heart of the Mystery.

Brian+