Good Friday

A country churchyard in northeast Iowa.

Just a couple weeks ago I passed a country church and saw this crucifix through the trees, stopped, and tried to put it in the camera and take it with. Somehow I was moved by an ordinary crucifix in a little country churchyard. I told myself on Good Friday I'd put it up, so here it is.

I'm a child of the Reformation, so the crucifix seemed to me--and still does, I suppose--a peculiarly Roman Catholic thing, almost contraband; but I've taken a shot at more than a little of Christ's suffering through the years. Here's a number of them, for Good Friday, from a host of places of worship. They are what we try to know, to feel, to understand of this particular day, a day when we're all catholic.

California Mission

Florence, Italy

Hoven, South Dakota

Marty, South Dakota

Hospers, Iowa

Rome, Italy

St. Paul, MN

Marty, SD

St. Peters Basilica, Rome

A California Mission

Cathedral of Sioux Falls

Peter Kreeft, Jersey born and reared, went to Eastern Christian High School and, thereafter, to Calvin College, before switching fellowships and becoming Roman Catholic. I don't know his work well, but I've been reading his memoir, From Calvinist to Catholic, where he says that one of the first inkling he felt with respect to the change was a simple desire to see, bodily, Christ.

To the Catholic faith, the 

physical dimension is not an addition to the essence but as essential as the spiritual. Christ saved us not merely or even mainly by giving us His mind, as all the great saints, sages, and philosophers did, but by giving us His Body. I intuitively knew and felt this "Catholic thing" even before I ever considered becoming a Catholic.

Just a thought on Good Friday.