We Lost God

Today is Good Friday. Today we celebrate the liturgy of Our Lord's Passion and Death on the Cross for the sake of our redemption.

Being raised in a nominally Catholic household, I never really celebrated Good Friday until I came to Franciscan. Even then, my freshman year I wasn't capable of really entering into the mystery, and my sophomore year, I was in Austria and travel plans fell apart so that my group could only make it to the Easter Vigil. Last year was the first year that I fully entered into the Triduum. On Good Friday last year, I had an experience that shook me to the core. So much so that I know that every year on this day, I will remember this experience and feel the sobering reality of what we celebrate today.

Last year on Good Friday morning, I went to confession and it rocked my world. I felt so ready to go to the liturgy and fully enter into the mystery and receive our Lord with a clean soul, with no sin standing between us. I also happened to be serving as a member of the Liturgy Committee, and because of something that I had to do for committee, I was unable to receive the Eucharist at the Good Friday liturgy.

Now ladies, I can't fully explain what happened next, because a year later, I'm still struggling to fully comprehend it. All that I can say is that being unable to receive Our Lord that day was devastating for me. It broke my heart in a way that I first thought was completely irrational. After all, there have been plenty of times when I refrained from receiving because I didn't feel well or for various other reasons.

But for some reason, this time, I felt as if my heart was being wrenched open. After all of my responsibilities of cleaning up after the liturgy were finished, I made my way to the Eucharistic Chapel in CTK, sat before the empty tabernacle, and quite literally wept.

At first I was frustrated with myself. What the heck, Catie. You need to get more sleep. This is completely irrational.

But then suddenly a line came into my head that I had been pondering for quite a while before this, and the Lord shed a light on the hot mess of emotional turmoil that was going on in my soul.

There's a poem written by Msgr John Duffy called I Sing of a Maiden. The poem is about Our Lady the morning after she gives her fiat and the Word becomes flesh to dwell in her womb. Cardinal John O'Conner, the founder of the Sisters of Life, was so struck by this poem that a line of it is engraved on the medal that all of the sisters wear as a part of their habit.

The line is: "And nothing would again be casual or small, but everything with Light invested, overspilling."

The Lord used this line to open my eyes and show me what a gift He was offering me by arranging things so that I could not receive Him. So I'm going to share with you the insight that I received, in the hopes that it will help you to enter into the full reality of what we celebrate today.

Sisters, the mystery of the Incarnation was an earth-shattering event that forever altered history. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. From the moment that our Blessed Mother gave her yes to the invitation of the angel, our God, the One who created the world and formed each of us in our mother's womb, has dwelt among us, on this earth, forever leaving His presence with us. Since that incredible event, there has never been a single moment when He has not graced us with His presence.

Except for those three days between His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead.

We rejected Him. We condemned Him to death. Because of us, He suffered excruciating torture and carried a heavy wooden beam up a rocky hill, where He humbly and willingly allowed Himself to be nailed and to suffer three hours of the worst pain imaginable.

And after He surrendered His spirit to the Father and died on that cross, we lost Him. For three long days, we were without our God. There was no Holy of Holies, no Incarnate Word. His body was in a tomb, but His soul was in hell, awaiting the moment when He would come back to us and forever free us from the power of sin.

But for those three days, He did not dwell among us.

And the turmoil that I felt not being able to receive, the grief that I couldn't understand, the tears that didn't seem to stop no matter how hard I tried to talk myself out of being upset, they were all a gift from Him, for He wanted me to fully enter into the reality of what His death meant for us.

Now, I know very well that even if our tabernacles are empty, He still dwells among us now. In fact, I even know where we keep Him during that time. I know that I will never fully understand the agony that Mary and the Apostles felt for those three days. But thanks to that experience, I will never not understand the significance of this day.

These three days mark the darkest days of history, but tomorrow night, we will celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord, when once more "everything with Light invested" will spill over into our souls.

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Catie Destatte is a senior Theology and Catechetics major. She has a passion for writing, Mama Mary, ministry to women, and evangelization. Her life motto is Totus Tuus Maria, and she tries to live that out in her every moment. Along with being a member of Women's Ministry Core Team, she's involved in Capture My Heart Core Team, Liturgy Committee, and Totus Tuus Maria Household. Her five great loves are JPII, St. Peter, tea, praise and worship music, and the ocean. Along with Shannon, one of Catie's roles in Women's Ministry is to run this blog. You can find out more about her here.