GOOD FRIDAY

29th March

"I am thirsty."

John 19:28

I am thirsty...

Yells the man with a parched throat.

I want justice, cries the young woman used in the brothels of the world.

"Bread," asks the child, his belly inflated with air and hunger.

"Peace," exclaims the witness of endless atrocities.

"Love," asks the lonely boy for being strange.

"Home", dreams the beggar who sleeps on a bench.

"Work," sighs a young woman who feels she is failing.

"Freedom", writes the convict in his poems.

"Health", recites the patient from his bed ...

Voices of sorrow, voices of tears, voices that reflect the pains of the world.

There are screams, and also whispers, all laden with grief.

source: pastoralsj.org

source: pastoralsj

THIRST

to reflect on...

"Christ has no body now but yours.

No hands,

no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which

he looks compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which

he walks to do good.

Yours are the hands through which

he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands,

yours are the feet,

yours are the eyes,

you are his body.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours."

Teresa of Avila

to read...

Psalm 42

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God?

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng.

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan,

the heights of Hermon-from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me- a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?"

My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"