Good Friday - Words from the West

Today is the first day of Spring Break, and for those members of most forms of Western Christianity, it is Good Friday. According to the Orthodox calendar, this Sunday is Palm Sunday, which makes today just a restful day for me. Everywhere I go, people are saying, "Happy Easter," and I say, "you, too," but in my mind it is, "yeah, whatever." My Greek godfather calls it, "White Easter," which I find hilarious.

It's a beautiful day outside. I went out to the track and did a little running. My mile time is 6:23 and I need to work on it to get it down (What's your's, Dean?). The highlight of my day was a little later, when I coached an athlete from the high school next to where I work. He runs the 1 and 2 mile races, and has a lot of talent, but has been given little specific direction. Now that my track season is over, I can spend time helping him until his district meet on Wednesday. He's a good kid, and very appreciative.

Although I spent most of my day playing outside, I don't stay fully ignorant about what most of the Christian world is doing. I read a good article last night about the Pope's Good Friday Meditations. Of course, there's a degree of controversy, since it includes an attack on genetic manipulators:

Surely God is deeply pained
by the attack on the family.
Today we seem to be witnessing
a kind of anti-Genesis,
a counter-plan, a diabolical pride
aimed at eliminating the family.

There is a move to reinvent mankind,
to modify the very grammar of life
as planned and willed by God.[1]

But, to take God’s place, without being God,
is insane arrogance,
a risky and dangerous venture.

Although Pope Benedict did not write the meditations, he certainly gave them his seal of approval and I'm glad to see him baring his teeth a little after being Pope for a year. Although I look at the Catholic Church from the outside (although I did a brief stint as a Catholic in 2001-2002), I was always a fan of Benedict when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, "Rotweiler de Dios." Of course, the meditations have much to offer besides controversy, such as these passages:

We, in our silly rebellion,
we, with our foolish sins,
have made a cross of our own anxiety
and our own unhappiness: we devised our own punishment.

and

Lord,
how easy it is to condemn!
How easy to throw stones:
the stones of judgement and slander,
the stones of indifference and neglect!

If anyone's interested, the meditations can be found on the Vatican's website.