Not Just One Day of the Year

There is “no denying that the cross is surrounded by glory,” wrote Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in Death on a Friday Afternoon, his meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, those mysterious and sometimes puzzling statements the Gospels record him saying from the Cross. As Fr. Neuhaus continued, the Cross is itself of a mysterious and puzzling nature. “It is, at the same time, the sign of utter defeat and indomitable hope. The defeat and the hope must ever be held together; the hope is not hopeful unless it has taken into account everything that contradicts hope.”