Good Friday and Holy Saturday

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A Meditation
By: Caryll Houselander
From the publication, Magnificat, Holy Week 2009

At Christ's death as at his birth, the circumstances of Christianity were the same as they are today.

In all this, there is some truth. Where Christ is, Judas is. There always has been, and there always will be, a bloody hand to take the thirty pieces of silver. But it is curious that Christ is doubted because he is consistent, and does not change, but remains true in every detail to his passion and its circumstances.

On the night of the first Good Friday, Christianity looked like a failure--it was a post-Christian world, Jerusalem moaned in her sleep, uneasy, threatened by war that might destroy her. The Apostles had fled. Judas hung from a tree. Christ was dead. All that was left in the world to show that he had lived was the empty cross on which he had died.

The poor huddled together, frightened and miserable, in the slums of the city; the lepers cowered in their caves in despair; sinners trembled, flung back into the hands of men. What now of the dreams that the prophet-poet had imposed upon them? "Blessed are the poor?" What now of the pure of heart who should see God? They had seen the man who said that he was God nailed up like vermin, bruised, disfigured, flogged, his face covered in filth and blood and the spitting of the crowd. They had heard his voice, the same voice that had cried out so lyrically on the mountainside that not even a sparrow falls without the Father's knowledge, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Christ rested in the tomb. He had done all that he could do and had given all that he had. He had trusted his Father and slept, darkness in his eyes, silence in his ears, peace in his heart.

Once he had slept in a boat that was tossed by storm. He slept now while a storm of evil tossed the world: the evil that flings itself in hatred against whatever is good, whatever is pure, the evil that seeks to kill God.

Christ slept. He had overcome the world; its storm could not touch the serenity of his consummated love. The hours moved slowly onwards through the terror and despair of that dark night, reaching out longingly to the moment of resurrection, the secret moment of ineffable love: the moment of the first heartbeat of the risen Christ.

In that first beat of the heart of the man who had died, the resurrection of the whole world would be contained.

Editor's note: Caryll Houselander (+1954) was a British mystic, poet and spiritual teacher.
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