Good Friday, 2026

 

In February 2018, I had the opportunity to stay overnight in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was not part of my original itinerary; however, I had heard that such an experience could be arranged if one spoke to the head sacristan of the Latin chapel and asked—very nicely.

And so, with my friend Steve, a priest of the Diocese of Los Angeles, I made my way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, dressed in my finest clerical attire. This was an opportunity we could not pass up. After praying at the site of Christ’s tomb and on Golgotha, I made my way to the Latin chapel, where several Franciscans were wrapping up an Italian Mass. We approached the sacristy doors, asked to be admitted, and, with a bit of cajoling, were let in. We were introduced to the head sacristan, a short Italian who spoke not a word of English. Through an interpreter, we made our request known. The sacristan replied, “We have precisely two spaces available this evening, Fathers. Come back at 4 PM, take a seat inside the church on the bench closest to the main doors, and wait until one of the brothers receives you.”

At 4 PM, I did just that. I sat and waited in quiet, slightly anxious reverence, along with my companion and several pilgrims from Poland. At last, one of the brothers greeted us and explained the procedure. We were to remain on the bench while the building was cleared of the last remaining pilgrims and the doors were shut for the evening.

After witnessing the ritual of the door closing—essentially unchanged since the time of Saladin—we found ourselves in a silent and empty church, free to explore its vast interior at our own pace, praying at its holiest sites without the throng of thousands of pilgrims and tourists waiting behind us for their brief moment to reverence the place of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. I cannot begin to describe the immensity of such a gift.

I prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary on Calvary and the Glorious Mysteries while kneeling in the cramped marble chapel inside the Aedicule, marking the spot of Jesus’ tomb. I can still smell the rose-scented incense and feel the cold, tomb-like air of the church as I clutched my beads. I can still hear the sounds of Greek and Armenian Mattins chanted beneath the immense rotunda above the Aedicule as I prayed Evening Prayer and Compline from our own Book of Common Prayer. The liturgy, we are taught, is a foretaste of heaven. Praying in that place in the small hours of the morning, it truly felt as though heaven were breaking into the present moment.

But as the night wore on, my focus began to waver, and I wandered throughout the building, exploring every inch of this vast structure. I noticed the many layers of history in this incongruous and expansive church: late Roman columns from Constantine’s early basilica blending with Gothic arches built by the Frankish kings of Jerusalem; Byzantine mosaics and Counter-Reformation statuary side by side; Gregorian plainsong mingling with the tones of Greek and Armenian chant as bells chimed and incense drifted above. It was as if all the debris of Western history had been drawn to this spot like a strong magnet pulling in scattered scraps of metal, with no deliberate plan or coherent whole.

At some point, I made my way to the Syrian chapel. Earlier in the week, I had been shown the ancient Jewish tomb cut into the exposed rock behind the altar—the tomb where, according to tradition, Joseph of Arimathea was finally laid to rest.

I will admit that, with no one looking, I decided to do something—perhaps a little strange. I crawled into the cramped space of the tomb and lay there for a few minutes in the dark. I felt the cold, damp rock surface and sensed what I can only describe as a kind of heaviness.

It was as though the whole weight of human history were converging on that spot. At the center of the world, I could feel the weight of human wickedness. Here, in this place for which millions died during the Crusades, I sensed the depths of our savagery and sin.

And indeed, on this rocky hill—now covered by this vast and exquisite church—sin reached its high tide. The worst that could be done by the human race was accomplished through a corrupt alliance of religious and political authority: Jesus Christ, the source of all goodness and love, was nailed to a wooden cross to suffer an excruciating death at our hands.

In so doing, we were permitted to heap upon his shoulders the full extent of our sinfulness—our prejudice and cruelty, our tendency toward violence and haughtiness, and our ignorance and indifference. We placed all this upon him, and we killed him.

This is what we bear witness to during the liturgies of Holy Week. We remember and enact the story of our redemption, which is necessarily the story of Christ’s suffering on our behalf. We recall the high tide of sin and death, when the systems of violence and oppression inflicted their greatest blow and, for a time, triumphed over good.

We feel the weight of human history as Jesus enters the teeming streets of Jerusalem, is betrayed, mocked, and scourged, tried and executed, and finally dies. We encounter the utter hopelessness of the human condition—man’s inhumanity to man and his rejection of, and indifference toward, God. Good Friday was indeed a true defeat. On the hardwood of a Roman cross, evil won. Yet out of this hopelessness, God has given us hope; out of our defeat, He has given us victory.

Albert Schweitzer, in his famous conclusion to The Quest of the Historical Jesus, wrote that “Jesus was called to throw himself on the wheel of world history, so that, even though it crushed him, it might start to turn in the opposite direction.” While I do not agree with much of Schweitzer’s theological writing, here he is correct. Jesus was crushed under the full weight of human history, but in so doing, He altered its course and reoriented its path toward God. Sin and death no longer have ultimate power over us; they are spent spiritual forces, and Christ, God made man, has taken away their sting. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we are free. In the end, even though we still suffer, God triumphs.

On the Cross, the depths of human sin meet the infinite mercy of God. The place of our greatest pain becomes the source of our greatest joy. In the Holy Sepulchre, as in Holy Week, I felt the weight of what was done to Christ—but I also felt that weight lifted through the mercy of God, who suffered so that we might not. This week, we hope even as we weep, trusting that on the other side of human suffering there is healing and redemption.

The path of redemption pioneered by Christ is not one of magical thinking. Belief in the power of the Cross—or even of the Resurrection—does not make our problems disappear, nor does it remove suffering. What it does is give us hope that the trials of this present moment are not permanent—that, in the end, God’s mercy will prevail. The present moment in which we live is fraught with violence and turmoil; sin and death seem to reign. The continuing war in the Middle East and the violent and divisive rhetoric at home reminds us that all is not as it should be. We are adrift and the shore seems very far indeed.

 And though we may feel defeated and helpless, we know that, in the end, God triumphs, because Christ has already defeated the death-dealing power of empire—and He did so on a Roman cross some two thousand years ago. This week, we stand at the foot of the Cross and remember the marvelous work of our redemption accomplished there.

I close with the seventeenth-century Anglican divine Thomas Traherne, who wrote in his Centuries:

“The Cross is the abyss of wonders, the centre of desires, the school of virtues,
the house of wisdom, the throne of love, the theatre of joys, and the place of sorrows;
it is the root of happiness…”