Today is the day of death.


Today is the day of denial, the day of violence, injustice, and shame. Today is the day that darkness seems to rise victorious.

Today is the day when everything is wrong; nothing turns as I had hoped. All my expectations, dreams and aspirations are reduced to ash. I am forced to confront the reality of terrifying loss. The one thing I thought I could never let go is wrenched from my grasp. Nothing holds. Any sense of security I may have forged is seen to be a pitiful illusion.

Today is the day when the carefully constructed scaffolding of my life comes crumbling down. I face the stark reality of injustice, suffering and human cruelty. I have nothing but dread and darkness as my companions. Apart from these tormenters, I am alone, stripped, naked. Tears are my only consolation. I peer over the edge of a dark abyss and fear falling into the bottomless pit.

Today is the day when everything comes to a dead-end, no escape, no way out. Today is the day of crushing darkness.

Today is the day I never want to face.

Today is the day I spend my life scheming to push away. All my strategies aim to avoid this day. The illusion of my ability to control the circumstances of life, lies shattered at the foot of a cruel cross.

It is hard to see the “good” in this Friday. It is the day when all the accumulated bad that has ever afflicted the human condition is heaped upon the shoulders of one man. All the worst of which humans are capable is poured out upon one sad, lonely, ravaged individual.

It never stops. He carries it all. He carries all that is broken, all that is tragic, all that is twisted; he carries it to the end of the day. He carries it into the abyss of forsakenness where it crushes him. Dark forces have taken his life and destroyed him. The defeat is total. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” “And darkness covered the face of the earth.” This is the end of the story. There is no room for hope in this tight airless universe in which evil has triumphed.

Yet even here, some hidden force is unleashed. Deep in the mysterious darkness, something shifts; life still stirs. “The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.”

Some mysterious power has been liberated. An enclave of life has been breached in the bulwark of death. Defeat has begun to turn. Like a chink in the armour of despair, the lifeless body of this one man has created a crack in the hard shell of death. The “good” will not be contained. The deeper nature of the universe has begun to arise.

But today hope remains a mere rumour; there are rivers of sorrow still to endure.