An aid to Thinking on Good Friday

PRAYER

Heavenly Father.

I find the story of this day unbearable.

It is bad enough that Jesus should have been put to death on a cross, but I realise that this was not so much the act of specially wicked men as the awful result of human attitudes.

To my horror I see where all human spite finds its target, and I admit my share in this guilt of humanity which would drive me to utter despair.

This day’s story is unbearable indeed – to all but yourself.

At this I marvel, that your love is great enough to take the monotonous hurt of all human wrongs.

Guilty, yet grateful, at the foot of the Cross I receive your forgiveness, and pray that you will enable me to live in dependence on your love.

I ask this is the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Lord Jesus: we look to your cross.

It accuses us of sin.

It assures us of pardon.

Keep us, Saviour, day by day

in the joy of your salvation;

and, day by day, keep us penitent

as those for whom your heart has bled,

your tears have fallen.

Saviour, we remember your grief and we also grieve.

at 3.00 o’clock.

Hear us, merciful Lord Jesus Christ, and remember now the hour in which thou didst commend thy blessed spirit into the hands of thy heavenly Father; and so assist us by thy most precious death that, being dead unto the world, we may live only unto thee; and that, at the hour of our departing this mortal life, we may be received into thine everlasting kingdom, there to reign with thee, world without end.

                                                                              John Cosin  1594 - 1672

POEM

Mother, there's a strange man

Waiting at the door

With a familiar sort of face

You feel you've seen before.

Says his name is Jesus

Can we spare a couple of bob

Says he's been made redundant

And now can't find a job.

Yes I think he is a foreigner

Egyptian or a Jew

Oh aye, and that reminds me

He'd like some water too.

Well shall I give him what he wants

Or send him on his way?

O.K. I'll give him 50p

Say that's all we've got today.

And …...I'll forget about the water

I suppose it's a bit unfair

But honest, he's filthy dirty

All beard and straggly hair.

* * * * * * * * *

Mother, he asked about the water

I said the tank had burst

Anyway I gave him the coppers

That seemed to quench his thirst.

He said it was little things like that

That kept him on the rails

Then he gave me his autographed picture

And these three rusty nails.

                                                            Roger McGough

VALETE

Our God does not promise us an easy life.

But he has at least promised us one thing: that we shall be able to find him, even in times of great difficulty.

Our faith makes us responsible for the world.

It is an undertaking for the world.

It works itself out in everyday things, but now God himself has entered our prosaic world which is our challenge and perhaps our cross.

The Christian should not be afraid of apparent emptiness.

Christ promised that from his heart would flow streams of living water.

When we try, without selfishness and without strain, to keep ourselves open to the unmerited gift of God, then even without our being aware of it, streams of grace and divine joy will overflow from our hearts.

Lidislaus Boros