Not a dismal prelude

(Good Friday) is not simply the dismal but necessary prelude to the joy of Easter, although I'm afraid many Christians think of it that way. Every day of the year is a good day to think about Good Friday, for Good Friday is the drama of the love by which our every day is sustained. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I love that phrase, "the dismal but necessary prelude."  I think this once described my own attitude toward Jesus' passion and death, as I failed to appreciate the beauty and victory of sacrificial love. Giving ourselves fully in love is never tragic, as long as that's what we're really doing.  Too often we mistake dysfunctional self-centered longing for the true giving of ourselves in selfless love.  The latter is marvelous and always victorious; the former is pitiable and often tragic.  But since we view all pain as distasteful, we tend to lump all of it together.


I know someone who is experiencing an excruciating trial now.  I know that she will somehow manage to love the one who has hurt her unspeakably, and that watching her go through the process of managing to do that will be an amazing thing.  It isn't often that we get to know in advance that we're going to witness a miracle of God's Spirit of love at work.  I'm so sad for my friend; my heart aches with hers for her loved ones, lost in such different ways.  Yet I also find myself hopeful for how the Lord is going to be at work in her in the weeks and months ahead.

To love selflessly - even when it costs us greatly - is never a tragedy; as we'd consider it, it isn't a dung heap from which a beautiful rose may happen to grow but which is, in essence, still dung. Sacrificial love is itself always a victory shrouded in mystery.  This is true of Good Friday, which is the type and fulfillment of all such love, the context in which true love finds its being.