I spent the Three Hours Devotion this year in Winchester Cathedral. I did not find what I was looking for there. What I did find was stunning cathedral architecture, a sublime choir, and cerebral speeches steeped in deep theological deliberation.A-cappella call-and-response of the sung liturgy wafted from everywhere and nowhere. A third of the way through, I was certain that the singing was getting ever so slightly louder and louder, until the processing, well-rehearsed choir materialised just to my left in the northern aisle, as their approach was obscured by the row of columns separating the aisle from the nave. A nearby 12th-century Tournai font drew my eyes to the light within shadow of a three-dimensional black marble relief of St Nicholas and the three daughters. Words of a deftly constructed sermons floated in the air under the weight of the ribbed vaulted ceiling.
It was all very beautiful. But I was looking for something else. This is not going to come out exactly right because I am trying to express something that I am finding difficult to convert into the concreteness of words on a page. Society already bombards me with stories of exceptionalism, of victory snatched from the clutches of defeat. It is every superhero movie: weakling becomes hero. It is every underdog game: unlikely victor. It is every recovery story: disability overcome. That happens... and it's great when it does. What about when it doesn't? ...when the recovery does not come, when the big game is not won, when the weakling is not transformed... The injured, the defeated, and the frail are all still human... and we must go on. It is not as compelling a story, but it is the common story of billions of us whose lives trajectories stray from the ubiquitous success narrative.Looking past suffering and imposing a tyranny of glory, meaning, and victory onto it adds more cruelty to already awful situations. I have eyes, and what they see is that suffering is usually just horrible. If I try to imagine myself standing with the followers of an itinerant holy man watching our leader gruesomely tortured and executed, in that moment, I am not contemplating some upcoming resurrection, glory, or hope. There is just despair, misery, and defeat. That is it. Such moments are overwhelming to witness. Sure, now, thousands of years later, we have the ease and luxury of connecting this day with the Resurrection. But that was not the view from that day: that day was just horrible.
I am not rejecting the victory of the Resurrection. I just feeling like I am already exposed that narrative everyday, relentlessly. Good Friday is the one break from it that I desperately need. What I am hoping to find on this one day is to allow those who need it, a space to just sit in the presence of suffering without a promise of its end. Somewhere within that abyss of being a hapless witness to suffering is a link to the compassion that defines our humanity.Photo Credits
Tornai Font: Londinoupolis
Women at the Cross: History.com
Winchester Cathedral Nave: val's road
