Good Friday — Part I

"When approaching the great feast days, don't go quoting your own thoughts.  People don't want your drivel.  Give them Classics, give them the Masters, give them real beauty."

—a priest of the Diocese of Lincoln

We have grown so used

to looking on a crucifix.  We’ve seen

so many crosses: delicate and cut

in ivory, and holding up the white

Christ placed in all proportion.  We have seen

so much of symmetry and carven wood,

and we have come so many times to find

Him in a shrine.  We’ve worn this on our breasts

and clung to it —have gone to sleep beneath

it for a prayer— and walked again.  And we

have know Him crucified.  His head is upright,

and He stands upon a solid ledge

with arms extended, and with dignity.

And it is good.  Aye, it is good for us

to shape Him thus in meaning, and to leave

the stark remembrance covered in the years—

as once the darkness closed upon a plainer

sight.  We could not bear to see, no more

than others, older, nearer to His day,

could bear the naked horror of a cross.

They could not look upon a crucifix

so easily —His first of followers—

they could not look: for in their lifetime, they

had seen men nailed.  Beyond a city’s gate,

along a road, they’d seen them; bodies broken,

stretched and drawn and taut upon a stake

and a crossbar; nailed to it, and reddened, writhing,

like a raw scar cut against the sky.

They’d seen them: twisted, sinking of their own

weight pulled upon the nails, with tongues extended,

heads that swung in torture side to side,

that lifted up and cried for death in babbled

spurts of sound.  They’d seen them.  They had seen

men nailed.  This was a death that Romans gave

to slaves.  This was a death that held contempt

and pain and shame — all fastened into one

great spreading gesture, set and bleeding there.

And this was His death, done to Him upon

a hill, and they could not be quick in looking…

even on a sign.

John W. Lynch, A Woman Wrapped in Silence, p. 223f.