"We reflect on the Fourth Word from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' That is of course, the first verse of Psalm 22, and some scholars speculate that, as a devout Jew, Jesus would have recited the entire psalm in the agony of his dying. If so, he also said, 'Yet thou art he who took me from the womb, thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts.' There before him was the woman who once held safely to her breast the one now held by nails to a bloody cross. The drowning, it is said, see their whole lives reprised before their eyes. As he sunk under the weight of humanity's crime, perhaps there passed in review before his eyes all the childhood hours in the safety of his mother's love, before his 'hour' came.
And Mary, what was she thinking then? They were likely looking at one another face to face. Much later, beginning in the Middle Ages, artists would depict a very tall cross, with Mary and the others far below at its foot. But historians believe that the cross was probably about seven feet tall. They were face to face. The sweat, the blood, the tearing tendons, the twitching, the wrenching, the bulging eyes- she would have seen it all quite clearly, as clearly as she saw him so long ago when she held him safely to her breast. When he was twelve years old they came to Jerusalem, and now she had accompanied him once more, to celebrate his last Passover there outside the walls of Jerusalem. But this time he is the Passover Lamb. This time they would not be going home again."
And Mary, what was she thinking then? They were likely looking at one another face to face. Much later, beginning in the Middle Ages, artists would depict a very tall cross, with Mary and the others far below at its foot. But historians believe that the cross was probably about seven feet tall. They were face to face. The sweat, the blood, the tearing tendons, the twitching, the wrenching, the bulging eyes- she would have seen it all quite clearly, as clearly as she saw him so long ago when she held him safely to her breast. When he was twelve years old they came to Jerusalem, and now she had accompanied him once more, to celebrate his last Passover there outside the walls of Jerusalem. But this time he is the Passover Lamb. This time they would not be going home again."
-from Death on a Friday Afternoon: Mediations on the Last Words of Jesus From the Cross by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus
Good Friday Liturgies at the Cathedral
Stations of the Cross at 3:00pm
Commemoration of the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday at 7:00pm
Commemoration of the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday at 7:00pm