The late Father Richard John Neuhaus, Catholic convert and editor of First Things, was our religion editor for a time at National Review. Every Good Friday I like to read through some of his Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross. And especially his reminder about the importance of Good Friday. In talking about these sacred days of the Holy Triduum — Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday — and then the celebration of Easter, he implores:
Do not rush to the conquest. Stay a while with this day. Let your heart be broken by the unspeakably bad of this Friday we call good. Some scholars speculate that “Good Friday” comes from “God’s Friday,” as good-bye was originally “God be by you.” But it is just as odd that it should be called God’s Friday, when it is the day when we say good-bye to the glory of God. Wherever its name comes from, let your present moment stay with this day. Stay a while in the eclipse of the light, stay a while with the conquered One. There is time enough for Easter.
By these three days all the world is called to attention. Everything that is and ever was and ever will be, the macro and the micro, the galaxies beyond number and the microbes beyond notice—everything is mysteriously entangled with what happened, with what happens, in these days. This is the axis mundi, the enter upon which the cosmos turns. In the derelict who cries from the cross is, or so Christians say, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The life of all on this day died. Stay a while with that dying.
Every human life, conceived from eternity and destined to eternity, here finds its story truly told. In this killing that some call senseless we are truly brought to our senses. Here we find out who we most truly are, because here is the One who is what we are called to be. The derelict cries, “Come, follow me.” Follow him there? We recoil. We close our ears. We hurry on to Easter. But we will not know what to do with Easter’s light if we shun the friendship of the darkness that is wisdom’s way to light. . . .
Good Friday brings us to our senses. Our senses come to us as we sense that in this life and in this death is our life and our death. The truth about the crucified Lord is the truth about ourselves. “Know yourself,” the ancient philosophers admonish us, for in knowing yourself is the beginning of wisdom. To which the Psalmist declares, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The beginning of wisdom is to come to our senses and know the fearful truth about ourselves, that we have wandered and wasted our days in a distant country far from home. We know ourselves most truly in knowing Christ, for in him is our true self. Or so Christians say. His cross is the way home to the waiting Father. “If you would come to your senses,” he says, “come, follow me.”
The ancient Christian fathers spoke of the Christ event as the “recapitulation” of the entire human drama. In this one life, all lives are summed up; in the eternal present of this one life, the past is encompassed, the future is anticipated and the life of Everyman and Everywoman is most truly lived. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he said. Not a way among other ways, not a truth among other truths, not a life among other lives, but the way of all ways, the truth of all truths and the life of all lives. Recapitulation. It means, quite simply and solemnly, that this is your life, this is my life and we have not come to our senses until we sense ourselves in the life, and death, of Christ. This is the axis mundi.
Death on a Friday Afternoon is even available on Kindle if you want to read through some of it today.