Each year, millions walk the Way of the Cross. Some do so along cobbled streets in Jerusalem, others in the quiet corners of parish churches, or in the solitude of their hearts. It is a ritual as old as the Church itself: a journey with Christ from condemnation to crucifixion, from agony to apparent defeat.
But this is no mere reenactment of an ancient tragedy nor is it only an expression of religious sentiment. The Cross is not just a symbol of unbearable suffering. It is a confrontation. A question. A scandal, even. In the words of Scripture: “Is it possible to remain indifferent before the death of God?”
For Christians, Good Friday is the darkest day of the year. A day of silence, sorrow, and the stillness of death. Yet paradoxically, it is also the day that hope was born.
Love That Suffers and Does Not Abandon
In Christ’s Passion, we see not a victim of fate but a God who enters into human suffering and embraces it. His arms, nailed open, stretch toward all of humanity: the betrayed and the betrayers, the oppressed and the oppressors, the wounded and those who wound. He calls even Judas “friend.” A final, staggering offer of love. And in that moment, where divine strength appears as utter weakness, something irreversible happens. The grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, and in doing so, bears fruit. The Cross, once an instrument of terror, becomes the tree of life.
We live in a world constantly tempted by power, control, and the illusion that with enough technology or strategy, we can escape suffering. We outsource it, numb it, scroll past it but none of this saves us. None of it answers the ache in the human heart. The Cross does not offer easy answers but it offers the truth of a love willing to suffer. Not because it glories in pain, but because it refuses to abandon the beloved.
This is why, on Good Friday, Christians beat their breasts. They echo the crowd in Luke’s Gospel who left Calvary stunned by what they had seen. They had witnessed God bruised, bleeding, broken. And they sensed something in the world had shifted.
Many today see little need for God or they see only a God of rules, of abstractions, or worse, of human manipulation. But the Cross cuts through those illusions. It is not the symbol of a triumphant empire but of a God whose throne is wood and nails - who cries out to his Father not in strength but in abandonment "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And who, precisely in that abandonment, gives birth to hope.
Because the story does not end in the tomb.
From the Silence, a Promise
Holy Saturday, the long pause of grief and silence, gives way to Easter morning. What seemed like defeat is revealed as victory. Not on the world’s terms, but on heaven’s. The Cross is a new beginning. From the profundity of death is raised the promise of eternal life.
Even in our most disillusioned moments—amid war, injustice, and loss—the Cross still speaks. It tells us we are not alone. That suffering can be redemptive. That love has a cost, but also a promise. It tells us that betrayal can lead to reconciliation. That sin, however deep, can meet mercy. That despair can be transformed into hope. That from hate, astonishingly, love can be born.
This is the lesson of Good Friday. And the reason Christians, generation after generation, keep walking the Way of the Cross - not to relive pain, but to rediscover a hope that does not disappoint.
So on Good Friday, and in every moment of darkness, we return to the foot of the Cross. Not because we are morbid or nostalgic, but because we believe this: that love is stronger than death.
Alexandra Tompson
Editor | Lawyer (Admitted in New York; England & Wales)
