Good Friday, ApriL 6

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?

—The Hymnal 1982, # 474

I often visit Holy Cross Monastery in upstate New York. It is a place for me to regroup and reboot. Over the portal, these words are deeply etched in stone: Crux es mundi medicina—The cross is the healing of the world. On this Friday, which we ironically call “good,” remember the cross as the place for the healing of the world.

As we reflect on the call of Episcopal Relief & Development— to heal a hurting world—take some quiet time to reflect on where that call originates. The theologian Karl Barth was once asked by another Christian if he could name the date and time that he had been saved, the implication being that if he couldn’t name that moment of conversion, it hadn’t really happened. In response to this litmus test, Dr. Barth answered: “I know when it happened. At 3:00 p.m. on that first Good Friday.”

We remember that Friday called “good” because it is the basis on which we meet the world’s sorrow with God’s love. Because the cross is the healing of the world.

—Jay Sidebotham

2012 Lenten Meditations, Episcopal Relief and Development