Good Friday

We pray to you this day mindful of the sorry confusion of our world.

Look with mercy upon this generation of your children, so steeped in misery of their own contriving, so far strayed from your ways and so blinded by passions.

We pray for the victims of tyranny, that they might resist oppression with courage and may preserve their integrity by a hope which defies the terror of the moment.

We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit.

O God, who resists the proud and gives grace to the humble, bring down the mighty from their seats.

Excerpt from a prayer by Reinhold Neibuhr. Artwork by Edward Boccia, Stations of the Cross - Station XII Jesus Dies on the Cross (1964).
 

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