Here I am. The church is vacant. An eerie silence fills the space like surround sound fills an auditorium. It’s so quiet my heart beats out loud. It’s beating fast for some unfamiliar reason. I’m feeling anxious. I’m feeling blue and desolate. There’s a heavy sense of foreboding. A darkness hangs in the air like a deflated balloon hangs about the playground. Something terrible happened. Why? How? What’s next? Is this the end? Wait! It’s Good Friday. Keep your eyes focused on Jesus. Stay with Jesus, stay with him, keep watch, pray, listen to him. Do not be afraid. Keep your focus on the Resurrection. I just shared with you something I wrote in my journal the very first time I observed Good Friday as a priest in 2007. I vividly remember feeling lost in space. Yes, Good Friday is a setting where human history went wrong. And it is a setting where we know God will make it right. He’s done it time and time again. Only each time he does it with a difference. Another Genesis, another beginning. Behold, God tells us, I make all things new. These thoughts are very much like our collective thought of today. It’s kind of the same feeling we all have had these past couple weeks with the Coronavirus hanging over us like a hungry predator waiting to devour its next unknowing prey. And yet, it is also quite different. There is hope. There is resolve. There is peace and a knowing. There is a power here that is greater than anything outside these walls, a power greater than anything that could pierce these walls. There is something far greater at work here than any predator, or any virus, or any darkness that surrounds us and makes us unsure and afraid. Something powerful breaks through all the noise of uncertainty and calamity. It’s a familiar voice. Jesus speaks, “It is finished!” All the suffering, the sacrifice, the humiliation has come to an end. Behold the wood of the cross on which hung the salvation of the world. I can feel another beginning is about to unfold. The world began in a void and God filled it with light. The absence we experience now is profound. It feels like time has stopped. Together we hang in a moment of suspended time, waiting for that explosive moment when God will say once again, “Let there be light,” and the church and our world will once again be a blaze. Remember, it’s Good Friday. There isn’t a Resurrection without a Good Friday. If you think about it, it isn’t finished. In fact, it is just beginning. Let there be light and thank you Jesus.