You might be lucky enough to be close to a  place of Good Friday worship, so you can walk the distance, walking the way. A walk on this day, it can be grounding, a prayer.  Remember step by step the way of your own cross, what you’ve been through since last spring. What do you carry with you into this Friday afternoon? Across the city then, what pains are you aware of, what doubts or hungers, shootings or neglect?

Across the globe, think of so many in prisons or refugee camps, the vengeful futility of the old religious wars. We remember these things, all we can’t manage, all we have lost, a story well beyond one person’s capacities. Let it matter to you as it can, helping you find your heart. We walk with God’s suffering servant, Jesus our brother and friend, on the way, not turning back.

Midway in the liturgy, the cross itself will be lifted up, its wood, its weight. Whose cross is it?  You are closer to knowing, learning so much, just in its tall presence, taking strength from your companions, holding another’s hand perhaps, and your own faithful heart, some love, some courage, reaching for that wood that draws us together now. The Body of Christ present now in all we carry, that Real Presence, this real dying. Come let us worship!

—Fr. Richard Bollman, S.J., a Jesuit of the Chicago-Detroit province, is currently engaged in pastoral ministries in Cincinnati and at the Jesuit Center, Milford, OH.