Look hard at a crucifix
it is sometimes fashioned to look
beautiful, in precious materials
that gloss over its obscenity;
a human being nailed up to a
wooden gibbet to die in public.
To those who have suffered grieviously,
from pain or betrayal or other people's malice,
the crucifix is precious precisely because it
shows the Son of God exposed to irrational
evil, to gross injustice, or an agonising,
lonely death, as so many people are exposed.
There are times when it is the only religious
image that makes sense. I think of a wife
whose world was collapsing as she discovered
the infidely of her hushand, she kept her
sanity by clinging to the crucifix on her
rosary and joining her agony to that of Jesus.
His last words, "Father forgive them, are consoling
because they show the power of love to overcome
evil, a real Trimph in contrast to the empty
Hosannahs of Palm Sunday.