The Darkness of God

Cristo crucificado by Diego Velázquez, 1632

 

There are certain days that draw us into their sorrowful depths: days of tragedy, and their anniversaries.

I am a Catholic, and today is Good Friday.  It is a somber day for us, a day to reflect on the gravity of our sins and the price that was paid for them.  As I sat down to write this post, I couldn’t bring myself to write anything.  What could I say?  To write about something else would feel flippant at best, and almost sacrilegious at worst.  Even now, commenting on the feast, I feel superfluous, small; as if my words could add an iota of anything to this day?

To convey one’s own mindset, it is sometimes best to use the words of another. In T.S Eliot’s East Coker, he speaks of “the darkness of God:”

“O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.”

These solemn days–be they religious or not–bring us to a darkness.  We reach the edge of our human experience, where pain and suffering have no apparent answers and sorrow reigns supreme. Where is God in the darkness?  As a Christian, I find the answer in God, in the revelation that this darkness is not where God is lost, but where He is found.

And so, dear reader, I wish you a most blessed Good Friday.  May the mystery of Christ’s death draw you deep into its darkness, so that  you may be likewise drawn into the light of His resurrection.