Ave and Consummatum Est

“He said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”  St. John 19:30

Today is the twenty-fifth of March.  That, in itself, may seem rather unremarkable to you.  The dates for the celebration of these great three days of Holy Week change from year to year, depending on the cycles of the moon.  We last kept Good Friday on March 25 eleven years ago, and it will next be on this date in 2157, when we will have all gone to our reward. 

But it may be that the first Good Friday was also on the 25^th of March, and as they say, thereby hangs a tale.

If you know your liturgical calendar really well, you will remember that when Holy Week and Easter Week don’t interfere, we celebrate another festival on this date, March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, and God sent His Son into the world to save us.  Christmas is exactly nine months from today.  This is a day of the great end, but also of the great beginning.  He came on this day to save us, and this day He announced His work was done.   The life of Christ is a perfect circle.

For Meditation: A Second Plot

"In the story of salvation there is a second plot at work, running through the cold and hard one, inside of it, on top of it. The father has shocked us all by running toward us, his prodigal sons and daughters, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That same son died a lonely and defeated death in the holy city towards which he had run, but now he is raised. God has given to the history of humankind another end, all of his own making. Now, through and beyond doom, there is the new Jerusalem, the city of God, his kingdom. Through no power of our own, we are also journeying toward the day of the Lord and his victory."
Bishop George Sumner, "The Resurrection of the Dead."