Five Minute Friday: Good

Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word, click here.

****

The stripped altar, empty tabernacle, and veiled statues at St. Joseph's parish in Macon, Georgia.

The pews are empty.

The altar is stripped bare of its cloth, candles, and flowers.

There is only the sound of absolute, deafening silence.

The tabernacle door is thrown wide open and the red sanctuary candle is extinguished because Jesus is not there. He has been reposed and the vigil of Good Friday has begun.

I sit in silence in that quiet, barren place and contemplate the crucifix and the coming Good Friday Service of Our Lord's Passion to take place in about 24 hours. We will venerate the cross by genuflecting, touching it, or kissing it. And I will cry. 

I will cry because I am not good. He is Goodness and did the ultimate good for me and for all humanity in that moment on the cross when He said, "it is finished." 

I am unworthy of His goodness and His good work for me.

****

Pope St. John Paul II venerates the cross as it is held by the future Pope Benedict XVI.

"Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world. Come, let us adore."

It is 24 hours later and I am crying. 

I am crying because of His goodness and my lack.

I am crying because I want to be worthy of this awesome, amazing, incomprehensible good that He did for me.

I am crying tears of gratitude for His love that would bear the agony of crucifixion for me.

I am crying momma tears of sorrow as I glance at my beautiful girls and feel with a jolt a tiny bit of what Our Lady must have felt as she gazed on her beautiful Son in His dying hours and recalled the baby she held, the boy she taught and nurtured, and the man He had become. I suddenly feel compelled to touch and hold and kiss all my girls and so in the midst of our standing to join the line going to venerate the cross, I hug all three in turn and kiss each on their foreheads.

I am crying because I feel so incapable of carrying my own cross that He has asked me to bear and yet it is so much lighter than His was.

And then the moment comes when I approach the cross and bend to touch and kiss His feet. Suddenly I am crying tears of love, adoration, and emotions too intense and complex for me to even articulate. It is the closest thing I have felt in the way of a connection to God in a good year and a half. 

I go back to my seat and kneel, tears still coming and my heart prays for more of this good. More of this kind of moment when suddenly the knowledge in my head and the deep yearnings of my heart connect. 

My eldest girl, M2, whispers, "Momma? I need a tissue" and I look at her face and see tears streaming down her face. As I get her one from my purse, she whispers, "Seeing Jesus on the cross made me so sad, Momma..." and suddenly it hits me that she has had her own moment with Him. I whisper back, "I know. Me too, sweetie." This moment she has had with Him is very good.

Oh, so much good on this Good Friday!

But the best good is yet to come....

****

Join the Five Minute Friday fun at Kate Motaung's blog!