Good Friday 2016

ON this Good Friday Annunciation Day Feast Fast, I am hereby officially commencing my contributions to this blog.  (For awesome, rather nerdy insight on Good Friday happening on March 25, see this other blog I just discovered for the occasion)

Good Friday is the day one most intensely feels the weight of Catholic paradox. God Himself, the Shepherd, becomes the sacrificed Lamb.  The Creator of the entire universe is tortured and thrown up on a tree by his puny, petty, creatures.  The worst, most evil crime in the history of the world-- murdering God-- which shouldn't even be possible, and which leaves blood on all of our hands, is called GOOD.

That seems pretty messed up. The gruesome murder of the only wholly innocent person to live (who is the Son of the other innocent, His Mother who suffer with him) seems like the least good event conceivable.  But that's looking at it based on the human contribution.  Fortunately, (understatement and a half) God allows us a share in His part in it all.  On His end, Good Friday is the ultimate act of infinite, unconditional love and unfathomable mercy.  He freely (and this is God who IS boundless freedom) laid down His life for His friends, even while they killed him, and asked only that they be forgiven for it.

Keeping it short, because I have to get to the greatest day's Liturgy, I end my inaugural post with one of my all time favorite poems, about a guy distracted from his soul's true desires, running away from the cross, yet finding his thought bent on it nevertheless.

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.