Friday of Holy Week - Weep

He laid down his head, and died.

There is a lot more in the story. He didn't get there by accident, or by himself. It took an empire, an unholy collaboration of Roman and Jewish law, of rulers, and soldiers just following orders, and people running away, standing by in shock, or just minding their own business.

But it winds up with the poor guy hanging lifeless on a cross, a rebel against the state, just another dead peasant.

Weep for him and weep for yourselves. Weep because he is not the first and is not the last. Weep because of his holiness and weep because of his humanity. Weep because we have not done what we ought to make a world without grosses, without warfare, mass shootings, "intimate" violence, poverty, oppression, domination and humiliation.

Weep because this incarnation of love was valued as less than nothing.

Every death, it seems, is in some way a slap in the face to hope. Even when expected, even at the end of a long happy life, even when it comes as a relief from suffering, if we are honest, we always hope for something different, something better.

If you have lost someone dear to you, you wonder what you could have done differently. And what is to come of us.

Weep, and wonder. But keep breathing. Your Lord may be dead, but God is not done.

Credits:
Anonymous, photograph by Ethan Doyle White, Wooden crucifix, 15th century (edited). Affixed to a pillar in the Santa Maria e San Donato in Murano. Used by license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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