Tenebrae 2021

Extinguish First Candle and Dim Lights Hymn: # 194 – Were You There? “Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.’ The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, ‘Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.’ Then he said, ‘ Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied to him, ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’” ( Luke 23:39-43 ) Meditation on The Second Word How much we are like the first thief - full of anger - because we are not rescued from our sin? Full of hate - because we suffer not only for our sins, but also the sins of others? We want God to snap his fingers and make right what we have made wrong – or what we have allowed others to make wrong. How easy it is to cry, "save us," and rail against God when there is no magic cure, no miraculous recovery, no legions of angels to take away pain and bring wholeness! How easy it is to scorn the Messiah, to mock God and condemn the light of the world because we are unwilling to face what we have done? Yet God is good. There is a cure for sin - a cure that does not promise magical solutions, but promises that the pain of sin is not the end, that when all this is over, when the suffering is finished, the final word is not death and defeat but life - life springing out of the ashes; life transformed and fulfilled. To the compassionate thief, to the one who could recognize God's gift to the world, to the one who sought God in Christ - - comfort was given: "Today, you will be with me in paradise." Extinguish Second Candle and Dim Lights Hymn: # 200 – Jesus, Remember Me “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved s tanding near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” ( John 19:25-27 )