Today I didn’t make it to the traditional Good Friday services. It’s the first time I’ve missed in recent memory. I fell asleep on the couch while I was reading “Living with Christ.” It was the special Holy Week supplement of the readings for Good Friday. “He was spurned and avoided by people, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide their faces, spurned and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes him whole, by his stripes we were healed.” Nothing has really changed and yet everything has in the last two-thousand years. Christ is still rejected and still crucified. Crucified more often than not by those who claim him most strongly. Today Golgotha is in Bagdad and Darfur. The crucifixion occurs wherever there is injustice in our world. It occurs in our work places every time we turn our back on someone who makes us feel uncomfortable. We adore you Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all of your churches throughout the world and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
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I agree wholeheartedly with your observations here.
When I was listening to The Messiah by George Frederick Handel this afternoon, as well as being moved by the music and enjoying the celebration of the Resurrection and all the alleluias and Hallelujah! throughout this Easter Day, I was also struck by the words from Isaiah 53:3