Today is Good Friday, when we remember and enter into the willing sacrifice of Jesus’ death on the cross. I took Elaine to one of my peaceful places, the Mt. Angel Abbey. It sits on top of an isolated hill, and on this gorgeous Spring day we could see Oregon farm fields and the Cascade Range in stunning 360° views.
We parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up the path lined by tall firs and by small huts with the fourteen stations of the cross. Being a holy day (no better upon which to walk these stations!) we shared the space with dozens of others, drinking in the pilgrim-placed roses and the scarlet red linens that adorned the huts. Some listened on their phones to guided mediations, others in family groups recited prayers from paper booklets.
By chance or providence, we stood in front of the twelfth station (“Jesus dies on the cross”) at 3:00 pm, the ninth hour as the gospels call it, when Jesus cried out and breathed his last.
Using my physical body to walk through a prayer experience; breathing outside Spring air bursting with new life; feeling a breeze ruffle my hair; embracing a practice that goes back centuries (and from a faith tradition not my own)—I experienced all these things today, bound together in this one afternoon. These are the types of embodied and historic experiences that I have continued to try and practice, to expand and rely on a richer faith experience—as I keep holding on to the Jesus I’ve known and followed for so long.
Seeing so many others today using a guide for their meditation and prayer created a pang of regret in me—why hadn’t I thought of that? Poking around with Google when I got home, I discovered that this year, for the first time in his papacy, Pope Francis wrote a prayer reflection on the fourteen stations of the cross. For each station he had a bible verse, a reflection, and a prayer. I took time going through it myself, and I recommend it to you.
For most of my adult life, the way of the cross has called out to me as the essential piece of Christian faith, and it has continued to demand more of me. A deepening, a wrestling—a critique and calling and comfort. The Protestant Evangelical faith I grew up with always emphasized Easter over Good Friday. Yet I have long believed that Jesus’ boldly submissive walk to the cross, coupled with his words to take up our cross and follow, are at the heart of how we are to construct a life ethic that makes us ready to receive the resurrection power God wants to bring about in us.
I find over and over that people in whom I see and feel the living power of faith (Pope Francis being one of many)—I find they, too, emphasize the loving power of sacrifice seen in the way of the cross.
One of the strengths of Pope Francis’ prayer reflection is how he heightens the oppositional tension between our “normal” way of living and this Christ-way of surrender and cross. Right in the very first station (“Jesus Condemned to Death”) Pope Francis highlights the silence of Jesus, his refusal to defend himself or fight for himself:
“Why don’t you protest? Why don’t you speak up and defend yourself? Why don’t you confound the learned and powerful, as you did so often and so well? Your reaction troubles us, Jesus: at the decisive moment, you choose not to speak; you remain silent…Yet that silence is itself pregnant: it is prayer, meekness, forgiveness; it is a means of redeeming evil, a means of converting your passion into a sacrificial gift. Jesus, I realize how little I know you, for I find it hard to understand your silence.”
Speak to my heart, Jesus.
This is the prayer Pope Francis calls us to make:
You, who respond to evil with good, Speak to my heart, Jesus. You, who calm rage with meekness, Speak to my heart, Jesus. You, who detest gossip and complaints, Speak to my heart, Jesus. You, who peer into the depths of my heart, Speak to my heart, Jesus. You, who love me more than I do myself, Speak to my heart, Jesus.
In this world where meekness rarely triumphs, where oppression reigns and relationships are broken, where more systems than Pilate’s Roman Empire deal out judgment disconnected from truth—in prayer after prayer, in station after station, Pope Francis gently reminds us (and with bold and audacious hope declares) that going to the risen/crucified one is the continuing path toward life, love, and healing. Read a few of his prayers from various stations:
I come to you, Lord…Jesus, give me the strength to love and begin anew…Raise me up, Jesus…Jesus, melt my hardened heart…Have mercy on us and the whole world.…Jesus, help me to recognize you and love you.
I know what I want to write to close this post, yet I am afraid it will be heard too simplisticly, too gummed up by easy use in our American churches. But the more I look to voices who demonstrate a life of true and living faith that has transformed their way of living in our world, the more I see the powerful truth: it is a living encounter with Jesus that we have too often missed in the institution of church.
I’m saying more than the glib “it’s a relationship, not a religion” phrase.
As we look honestly at power winning and empires killing and the selfishness of some oppressing so many others, we don’t need a flying Jesus in a white robe to pull us to heaven. We need the one who experienced losing, and being killed, and being oppressed, while not responding in kind. We need the one who joined us in suffering, and yet never lost sight of the humanity of the ones causing the suffering.
May we follow the way of the cross. May Jesus build in us his sight for the humanity of all, and grow in us a transformative love. May we be given strength and love. May we be raised up.