A MAN OF SORROWS

PRAYER PAUSE

Good Friday, 14 April 2017

A MAN OF SORROWS

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “A man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, a man to make people screen their faces; he was despised and we took no account of him. And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried.” (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)

Reflection. The fourteenth century author of The Cloud wrote, “Everyone has plenty of cause for sorrow but they alone understand the deep universal reason for sorrow who experience that they are. Every other motive pales beside this one. They alone feel authentic sorrow who realise not only what they are but that they are. Anyone who has not felt this should really weep, for they have never experienced real sorrow.” Can we try to understand this? Many things make us sorrowful but often they have much to do with our failures and hurts. And all of this is rather self-centred. The writer here is going beyond our egocentric view to tell us that just being human is a great sorrow: it limits us and we cannot be fully what God created us to be. We ache to become what, deep down, we want to be; a person who reflects the divine life, the image of God we are made in. Only death will release us from our limitations.

Prayer. Lord, as we try to share your sorrow and suffering today, help us to reach out for the divine life you long to share with us; may our words and actions reflect this longing.  Amen.