Good Friday: Silence Reigns

Good Friday: Silence Reigns

Blackened skies,

angry rain lashing

upon the well-trodden slabs of earth.

Death sweeps across the horizon.

Angry mobs frighten the innocent,

baying for blood, chanting for death to visit slowly, painfully.

The brutality of the cross

bears down upon human shoulders

battered and bruised by the blows of soldiers.

More painful still, the gnawing silence, the rejection of love

Lifted high.

Held in place

by the savage force of nails hammered in.

Suspended between the sky and the earth,

belief too, is suspended for the briefest moment

Precious words

tumble from parched lips.

“Forgive them Father”

Belief sighs in awe,

truth gazes at love, while love gazes back.

Surrendered to death.

In one final expulsion of breath.

“It is accomplished”

Silence reigns,

mysteriously, sacredly,

his lifeless body taken down gently.

To be lovingly caressed, ritually prepared,

reverently incensed with perfumed oil,

lain tenderly in a tomb, where silence reigns.

Fr Patrick Brennan 2022 ©