It is always hard to know what to think or say about Good Friday. It is the cornerstone of the Christian belief in redemption and eternal life, but its events are painful in the extreme.
Good Friday, in its unrelenting focus on the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus, is also an excruciating reminder of the capacity of human beings for cruelty and vengeance.
But, perhaps, the most important message of Good Friday is that true innocence may suffer, may be brutalized and tortured, may even be killed, but it perseveres.
Innocence arises again and again in the hearts and minds of every human being ever born. That only a tiny minority become the torturers is proof that innocence is the real bond that unites us. We recognize it in babies and young children, and in the very old. Its poetry speaks to all of us in a way that does not require language or common cultural bonds.
To get to the joyful feast of Easter, we must pass through Good Friday.
That, is, to find the peace that comes with recapturing innocence, we must suffer its absence and long for it. Peace, faith in eternity, love of our fellow human beings, all begin with a search for innocence in the midst of brutality, and a hope for a return to "good" as the rule that governs the world.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is not just Christian. It is found in every religion and philosophy seeking to explain human existence.
The human search for innocence can bring us together, if we are willing to try.
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