We kneel, praying, waiting, devastated, and watch ourselves and the ones we love struggle with the dead dreams of broken relationships in which we or they have been abandoned or betrayed. We suffer, struggling to share our faith with many whom we love who have hearts which are dead to God because they have either walked away from God or never known God or they reject that God exists. We who believe may come close to despair; we and the ones we love have come to our own cross, our own Calvary, and life may seem a living death because our hearts are dead and unresponsive, killed and entombed by grief.
We face such outer and inner tombs, filled with dead loved ones, dead dreams, dead hopes, and we cry out, we wail, we weep bitter tears. The night of our near-despair is long and dark and silent. Where is the Light that will come to warm us and lead us out of darkness? How long do we have to wait in this anxiety-ridden place where we cannot see the way out to new life?
Sooner or later, all that we are lies dead and buried in the tomb with Jesus.
With Jesus! Do we forget that he, God and Man, also lies dead in the tomb of our dead loved ones and our dead hopes and dreams?
"My Love is Crucified. And so it is with every human being. What we desire, what we love, what we cherish, what we seek for, what we work long to build up, it all dies sooner or later on its cross. And we ourselves sooner or later come to our own Calvary.
"DO NOT BE BITTER....because God has gone before you. Do not rail at life...because God has gone before you. Do not harbor any hatred or disgust because of your human frailty and mortality...because God has gone before you.
"Do not be angry at God...because in this fallen, sad, mysteriously un- happy world, where beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, life and death come together so strangely...into this world has come the Son of God to bear our life. Without Calvary, I would be unbearably angry at God. I would be furious to the point of hatred - a strange hatred mixed with reverence and love. But how can I hate a God who has endured all evil for me - and not only for me but for every human soul?
"Find the worst suffering in the world, Jesus has been there first."
(Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F R., "At the Cross: Stations of the Cross)
Even in the darkness of the tomb of dead lives, hearts, and dreams, we can find the God-Man who also inhabits it, who loved our sins to death. And because he lies in his failure, suffering, and death beside us, a point of Eternal Light and Hope remains.
Jesus died saying "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" because all is accomplished. In his obedience, in his failure and death, he has brought new life into the world. By daybreak, the tomb will be empty.
Can we have faith? Can we have hope? Can we trust that God Who died is also all-powerful in perfect Love? That perfect Love will break the bonds of death and bring new hope and new life to our struggling lives and to our beloved dead who have gone before us? That God holds all of us in his tender, merciful hands and always will? That because Jesus who died now lives, there is always hope for change and growth in even the most desperate circumstances?
Kneel and mourn and search the darkness. In the darkness the massive stone of death and grief is beginning to move. A single point of Light shines forth. As the One Who is the Light of the World always will.