To any Christian, Easter’s significance is obvious and forms the foundation for our faith. But since I was young, I was always more emotionally and spiritually impacted by Good Friday.
Although Easter Sunday truly fulfills Jesus’ most important promise, to me it was the day of his death, when he was still partly mortal, that reflected the true, unselfish, human choice he made so all of us could have everlasting life.
The physical suffering that Christ endured during Good Friday and the days leading up to it, has been analyzed and reflected upon for millennia. It is entwined with his resurrection.
I have tried, since I was a boy, to visualize and fully appreciate the physical pain from the torture he voluntarily endured for us. I have tried to also imagine the emotional trauma he endured on so many human levels.
I take myself slowly and deliberately through the events leading up to his crucifixion.
First came the flagellation, or the scourging at the pillar. where Christ was bound and whipped and tortured. The mocking of Christ came next and then the crowning with thorns.
I close my eyes and imagine my cross hung on my shoulder. My body beaten and my head swimming from the loss of blood. I trudge along a path to my certain death being pelted with stones and lashed with whips, carrying the cross upon which I will die.
I close my eyes and imagine I am lying on my crucifix. I feel the nails driven through my flesh into it. And finally I have envisioned myself being raised high above the ground in the hot sun, hanging only by my bones, tendons and skin. The Stations of the Cross are quite often a young Christian’s first visual telling of the tortuous Passion, as it was mine. But the Stations of the Cross tell us little of what The Passion meant to Jesus emotionally and psychologically as a man.
I have tried to imagine the human emotional pain that Jesus must have endured. This is something that I have read or heard very little about. We have learned so much of the physical torture that Jesus endured, but I believe the emotional torture could have been worse. I spend Good Friday trying to consciously feel the human emotions that Christ felt. I imagine his viewing people as they came and went, some close, others at a distance, taking care of the minutiae of their days, oblivious to the man who had come to give them everlasting life. He saw the vultures circling overhead, as all the crucified did. I imagine his natural human terror, as he hung helplessly, horrified at the realization that his body might soon be picked apart by them. These and thousands of other terrified human thoughts must have raced through his mind simultaneously, just as they would have for us, during his long death upon his cross.
During his last mortal day, he hung there helplessly. All he could do was feel. And what he felt was emotional and physical agony. Like a common murderer, he lived his last hours knowing he was going to physically die without any means to save himself. But what was worse, Jesus could not be sure he would have everlasting life, just as we do not.
I focus on the human man that Jesus was, and ignore the fact that he was the Son of God. Only then can we begin to understand the mortal tribulations that were thrust upon him. I think many of us discount the physical emotional and psychological torture that Christ went through, as they see him as immortal and part God. But I think that's a mistake. I don't think the divine part of Jesus made any of his tribulations and suffering any easier than it would have been on us.
I wonder if he, as he was part man, thought of the indifference of all those ignoring him. I wonder if he included humanity when he beseeched his father as to why he had been forsaken. The multitudes he had lived for, taught and performed miracles among, also forsook him. All those he had brought hope to, and performed miracles for, so quickly vanished from his side at his hour of need. He may have felt that he had failed and his life’s work, and his death, were worthless and would quickly be forgotten. He could easily have thought it had all been in vain.
The human part of Jesus couldn't have known or understood his Father’s plan and so I am sure he questioned and questioned until his last breath as we all would have. The mortal Jesus did not have divine understanding, just as we do not. Maybe like us, all Jesus had, at his last moment of consciousness, was faith in God, the same God we pray to. He too had no assurance of an afterlife and felt the deathbed fears we may all feel one day.
As the moments of human consciousness left him, his body long since numb from shock, I imagine and hope that at that last human moment, his father gave him the realization of the kingdom of heaven, in human terms, as you and I will have. So just before he returned to the right hand of the father, to complete the trinity again, I hope his human soul was given true peace as a mortal being, as he deserved that, for having endured a human life, and torturous death, for our sake.
And then finally, after more than three decades, his last human breath exhaled, he was cradled within his father's arms again, never to be let go.....
Have a blessed Good Friday & Easter
