Every day is a good day to consider the cross. But Holy Week especially draws us to Golgotha. Each year, we join the church around the world, and through the ages, as we set apart Good Friday for focused contemplation of Jesus’s crucifixion. We recall Jesus’s haunting question in Gethsemane: “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?” (Mark 14:37). We don’t want to snooze through the annual remembrance of his suffering. It mattered to Jesus that his disciples would keep watch with him in his agony — not only in the garden but all the way to the end. He longed for their attentive company and their supporting prayers.
Could that longing offer a clue as to what Christ desires from us this year? What if we used our imaginations to enter the scene described by Scripture? Perhaps we could walk alongside John and Mary, who stayed close to the cross while others fled. Maybe then we would feel the meaning of Good Friday more deeply and so love Jesus all the more.
