The last few years have wearied many of us, with political unrest, a cruel and unsparing pandemic, violence, loss, and worries too many to mention. On this Good Friday, 2023, we may be too bogged down by lack of energy or hope to enter into the saving mystery of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was a British poet who describes so well that sense of distance, even alienation, from the experience of Christ during his death on the cross that can emerge when we’ve been weighed down by more stress than we have strength to bear.
The poet has been “been there”, observing others responding with emotion and heartfelt grief to the suffering of Jesus, while she recognizes nothing but a cold and stony feeling within herself. How often have we blamed ourselves for our discouragement and apathy, wondering what blocks us from knowing the joy of those who proclaim the words of the Gospel hymn “It is well with my soul”?
Let this excerpt from her poem, which describes this state of emptiness so well, assure us that we are not alone, and that our Shepherd will not give up his search for us even if we must wait for him to find us in our dark and shadowy spaces to lead us into the light that awaits.
Good Friday by Christina Rossetti (1866).
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
