Good Friday

April 2nd, 2010

This year for Good Friday, I really wanted to do something to reflect on and feel the impact of Christ's death and resurrection. So, on Good Friday, which I conveniently had off from work, I invited my parents and Juan Carlos's mom over and we made a "simple meal" Mexican style which consisted of beans, cheese and homemade tortillas...ok, so Juan Carlos insisted on sardines too, but not all of us ate that...

After dinner, we watched the movie "The Passion of the Christ" and I just have to say this is such an incredibly well-done film. The first time I saw it was in college with a bunch of people from Newman Catholic Campus Ministry and having that visual to think back on during mass and throughout the Easter season just really changed my ability to connect to what Christ did for us.

You would think after seeing it several times now, the movie would lose its impact but I seem to get something different out of it every time. When we watched it on Friday, I couldn't hold back the tears when it flashed back to Mary running after "little boy" Jesus when he fell down and showed her running after him as he fell when he was carrying the cross. How great her suffering must have been to have to watch her "little boy" suffer like that...

And Easter Sunday mass during the consecration, I just kept thinking of what Jesus did in "giving his body" and what a big deal that really was and is. And I thought about Mary and the people that loved him and how difficult it must have been to stand by and watch someone they loved suffer so much without being able to stop it.

Sometimes I think it's so easy for us to get caught up in the "routine" of mass and prayer. I felt for awhile like I was going to mass out of more of an obligation or habit than out of a real desire to connect with God and the community. And these kinds of films are such gifts to people like me because they really pull me in and make me think and give me the images I need to understand the reality of sacrifice and the influence of evil and the beauty of love.

I felt challenged after seeing it to accept my small cross at work of not feeling valued or appreciated with more grace and to try not to complain. If Jesus can forgive and ask forgiveness for the people who literally beat him to death, shouldn't I be able to do that with a supervisor who I have a hard time with?

I also felt challenged to try to be really strong physically in facing childbirth. My hypnobirthing class gave me a lot of hope and helped me to see childbirth as something very "do-able" but as the day draws closer and more and more people share their stories and opinions, I've been feeling myself get pretty anxious again. Expecting to feel pain or to suffer is a kind of strange situation but so much about this parallels what Christ went through. He knew to an extent what lay before him when he was in the garden of Gethsemane and he accepted the physical suffering he had to endure because it was for something greater than himself.

I feel like that about childbirth. Obviously, giving birth is not the same as bringing salvation to the world, nor is the physical pain comparable, but the parallel helps me to be stronger- maybe if he did all that for me, I can go through this comparatively small thing for Him.

If you've never seen the movie, I HIGHLY recommend it- sure it's tougher to watch than a light romantic comedy and isn't exactly an "escape" kind of film but I think it serves as a very important reminder in our lives about who we are, what we believe, who we want to be and how close or far we are from getting there...