Maggie's Farm

Beautiful essay for this holy day, perhaps the most resonant day in the Catholic liturgical year. As a young girl, Good Friday meant a day free from school, the first free day of spring to explore the woods, scouting for new growth or shrewdly evaluating the damage that winter had done to our elaborate system of paths and forts. Free until three o’clock, when having been called in from the woods by our mother, we dutifully filed into a dimly lit church, which stood in sharp contrast to the bright sun outside, and took our place in the pews.

I remember once looking at the fresh spring dirt under my nails, and thinking this was the only day that my mother would allow us to wear sneakers in church. And she, usually dressed perfectly for Mass, had only removed her apron and just barely ran a comb through her beautiful red hair. No lipstick, no stockings. And that was how Good Friday was meant to be, I realized. The death of Jesus was an earthly event that took place smack in the middle of life.

I remember thinking that all we really all we are asked to do was to acknowledge it – to stop what we were doing and think about this event . It was immediately evident, even to a young girl, that we didn’t deserve this sacrifice.

Throughout Lent, the Stations of the Cross, would offer us the opportunity to re-enact this event on a weekly basis, but on Good Friday afternoon we were asked to relive it – to examine our role in the Passion, not just to choose our favorite characters (Simon of Cyrene, of course!) but to acknowledge the person we really are, and the actions we permit or perform that betray our commitment and fidelity to the Son of Man whom we have condemned (and continue to condemn) to death.

Thanks for posting this reminder to stop, once again, and relive this afternoon, to make it our own.