Adoro te devote, latens Deitas

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, 

your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Let me say it in calm, poised, less violent words. Two things stand out for me distinctly against the darkness of the Good Friday this year.

The Body of Christ : a living reality, a vital organic unity we all participate in. The balance, the homeostasis of this unity is maintained by all its members. So closely knit we are, so essential we all are to the life of the whole, so vital is the exchange of love between us, that when one of us goes, when one tiny member of this Body is taken out -- the whole Body is shattered, the whole Body is crippled and wounded, and Christ Himself is trembling in pain. 

Each and every individual death is a wound to the Body, and an offense to its members. When it befalls those we know and love, we take on the shock, absorb the wave, grieve, and bear the scar; we stand in the frontline, we are the adjacent cells suffering from a brutal removal of the flesh that, we feel, is our own flesh. And so we must, for we are in Christ -- we are allowed to bear a little. But it is no different when death takes people we do not know; their own adjacent cells then absorb the shock, so that the wave of pain doesn't reach us. The wound is nevertheless inflicted to you and me, members of Christ's Body. This happens everywhere, every moment - here and now; we are just spared the feeling of loss, for we cannot bear it all. 

All days are Good Friday. There is no such thing as death or grief that are none of my business. 

Another thought comes from Gethsemany and feet-washing. God's love has no other way to reach the world than through you and me. Through us and in us He loves, and His own very life we carry when we let it happen in our hearts and minds. No Kingdom is possible unless there are people who desire the Kingdom and let it be brought down here -- now and then, little by little, one piece after another, smuggling it in whenever possible. No matter how weak and inadequate, no matter how totally irrelevant we might feel  -- we must forget it all for a while, and let God give, care, help, serve through us;  and sometimes, us!  We have to, simply because there is nobody else to do the job: He has only our hearts and minds, our voices and our hands to make overflow the fountain of His life. 

God's love is running in Christ's blood, like grief is running in mine, and the transfusion is slowly taking place. To be fully human means holding in our hearts both the tragedy of life and the fountain of love; allowing both the sore grief for what is irreversibly lost, and an overflowing gratitude for what is so generously given.