Black Friday

The sky went black as the sun disappeared behind a force all but unknown to those that were gathered. But how much more unaware were they that they stood at the feet of an even greater power than the one that blackened the sun. 

Thunder rolled, as mighty as what one would imagine is the voice of God, then lightning cracked and the man on the cross bent his head. With a piercing cry, his mother fell to her knees, unwilling until this moment to acknowledge the inevitable end of her son. Till the very end, holding onto faith that the legions of angels He could call down with a breath would tear those nails from His hands, would draw their swords and slaughter the Roman soldiers standing guard.

As she wailed, the ground shook. Roman soldiers rushed to the crosses to hold them steady against the terror of the earth. The man whom the-now-dead-man had loved sank to the ground and wrapped his arms around the mother of the dead man, as if to shelter her from the attack of the natural forces, but his arms didn’t give her comfort. Though they could stabilize her, they couldn’t protect her from the attacks on her heart as, bitterly, she wondered how she could have been so wrong.

The wind whipped around them, drawing the sand from the ground into its grasp and dashing it into the eyes of the bystanders. As it did so, the mother could hear the

centurion behind her whisper; ‘surely He was the son of God.’And at that she let out her second wail. She wept. She wept as she wondered how this centurion could think that in this moment, this moment of all moments, that her son was the Son of God. 

She remembered the angel, the fear that had caused her to tremble until she had fallen to the ground. She remembered the foreign kings from the East who had appeared at her doorstep after hundreds of miles of travel and had called her two-year-old son a king.’ She remembered her son’s miracles, the way the blind men suddenly could see and how the lame

could suddenly walk and now?

Now was when the centurion called her son the Son of God? He was dead. The howl rose up within her. He was dead. How could he have been the Son of God?

How could this Roman centurion who had just overseen the execution of her son say those words with such conviction, when she, His mother, was on her knees wounded and confused?

Mary.

And with a sudden intake of air, her tears lulled and she remembered his last words to her:

  “John, this is your mother. 

Mother, this is your son.”

She exhaled with a shudder, realizing with sudden clarity her son hadn’t given her charge into the hands of his brother, but into the hands of the man who, out of all, most fervently

believed that her son was the Son of God.

Trust me,” His eyes had said before He had taken His last breath. “Trust me. And continue on.” 

His eyes hadn’t lost their light, their hope, their sparkle. No, His imminent death hadn’t torn the peace from His eyes, the confidence from His spirit, the love from His heart. No. And so neither, she determined, would His death tear the peace, the confidence, or the love from hers. So, even though she did not yet understand what was to come, she leaned on John, stood with all her bones creaking, and said, “Come, it is time to prepare the body of the Son of God for burial.”