Nothingness/Void/Death (Good Friday 2018) I got up at my usual time this morning, made coffee, filled a cup and went outside to drink it. The moon at this time is almost full, beautiful glow from its gentle light as well as a gentle breeze. There is nothing that is for me more beautiful than a morning such as the one we had today. After my coffee, I went into the Church and as always on Good Friday, it is always a shock to enter without the Blessed Sacrament not being present. Just an open tabernacle, showing only darkness inside, a deep, cold, lifeless darkness. For what was once a place of light is now only a lightless nothingness. As I sat in the silence, I thought of the burden we all carry in the knowledge of our own deaths. Even if not thought about at all, still on some level, we know that we have little time here and that our life moves swiftly to its conclusion. Death seems to have a bottomless stomach in swallowing up all that lives. Jesus in pouring himself out entered into that darkness, gone, swallowed, and buried in a cold dark tomb. Our church is a sepulcher without the Blessed Sacrament, just a hollowed out building resembling a soulless body of one who has died. In our Vigil service for Good Friday, we have a different monk read each psalm, and a priest to do the prayer after the reading. Then the priest when he finishes his prayer, blows out one of seven candles. The slow dimming of the light. As I get older I see it as a metaphor of my own aging, my own movement towards darkness, death, the leaving of this world. The psalms that the monks read are sad, filled with anguish, yet also hope in God’s presence through it all. God’s love, his tenting with us, also shares our pain, such is love. They go together, a dance. Not a pleasant one, who wants to suffer? The only way to protect oneself from the pain of loving is to freeze the heart; killing it. Though emotional numbness is worse than feeling I believe. Jesus emptied himself when he gave his life. He allowed humans to do their worst, yet he loved. He was hated and spit upon; he still loved. He was betrayed by one of his disciples, yet he still washed his feet, still full of mercy and compassion. He was denied by Peter, yet he understood and embraced him, loved him back into this heart. So it is with all of us. Love is defenseless, for it cannot lash out at one who is loved totally and with complete abandon. It is hard to fathom as well as to believe, yet I do believe. Hoping against hope as St. Paul states that such is God’s love. Yes, Jesus was swallowed up into the nothingness, that cold void, which is always hungry, for it is essential emptiness. Yet Christ’ light swallowed up death because of his love, his not giving into hatred or the desire for revenge. I still struggle with this revealed reality of God’s love as shown us in Christ Jesus. One day, however, I believe that my heart and all of our hearts will be broken open by this love. Our walls will come tumbling down because when love comes and we are seen and feel loved by that which sees us, we will all crumble into the arms of an infinitely loving and compassionate God. Christians should live out this truth, pray for the ability to love, pray to be used by Christ Jesus, to make our hearts like unto his, to make our minds into his mind, to incarnate in us, so that we can love, heal, and embrace all whom we meet, not judging, but loving all into the kingdom. When we pray the Our Father, let us not forget that we are praying for all, none are left out. Life is hard, and then we die. True, no doubt. Yet to have the courage to look into the void and to affirm that Christ Jesus has been there and death, void/nothingness, has been swallowed up in victory, is not always easy. At this time we see as through a veil, yet we go forward in hope and in that hope, we are able to embrace all that life can throw at us without giving in to bitterness or despair……for Christ Jesus has gone before us, is with us, closer to us than our skin, our thoughts.
Love is defenseless, for it cannot lash out at one who is loved totally and with complete abandon. It is hard to fathom as well as to believe, yet I do believe. Hoping against hope as St. Paul states that such is God’s love. Beautiful!
