A Good Friday Epiphany

by Mike Brennan

Every once in a while you realize, albeit after the fact, that you were exactly in the place you were meant to be. Perhaps it was the result of some providential design, for how else would it have come about? Today just so happened to be one of those times in my life.

I can’t remember over the past several decades when I have not attended a church service on the day and hour of our Savior’s death. In fact, I can still recall being in New York City many years ago at an auto show and needing to leave the Javits Convention Center prematurely for a two plus mile trek on foot to St. Patrick’s Cathedral so as not miss their 3 pm service. It was that important to me. This Good Friday however would turn out to be a trek of a different kind.

Unlike the Good Fridays of the past, this year’s remembrance of Jesus’ passion and for that matter, Holy Week and beyond will be remembered by Catholics more for its empty churches and weeks devoid of receiving the Blessed Sacrament, all the result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Knowing such would still not deter me as most churches remained opened for the devout to pray in the comfort of their favorite pew. At least that’s what I thought would be the case. Truth be told, I was actually looking forward to praying in the darkened silence of my church, sort of a one on one with my God and experiencing the amazing peace I find within.

Arriving quite ahead of the 3 pm hour, I found my familiar pew and shared the entire church with just one other soul who followed the same Good Friday ritual. As the 3 pm hour approached, a few more parishioners arrived to pray. It was then that I heard from the pulpit … “if you were not invited, you have to leave…it is not my wish but the one who ….” The rest of the declaration was incomprehensible, not because it wasn’t spoken clearly but because the words I was hearing were shocking to my senses.  

Literally bewildered, trying so very hard to understand what was being said, I sat motionless when I heard for the second time… “If you were not invited, you have to leave… really… it is not my wish but ….” Dumbfounded and unsure of what to do next, I felt my shock slowly changing into an absolutely crushing feeling. Leave? Why? What would it hurt having 2 more worshipers accompany these three invited guests in a church designed to hold hundreds? Nonsensical, angry and deeply hurt doesn’t begin to describe the emotions beginning to well up in me.       

Nervously, I stood up feeling somewhat embarrassed that I had not made the “cut” on someone’s list. I noticed the other soul who shared this day’s ritual with me heading for the vestibule, obviously in the same state of disbelief as I felt. Seeing this woman at the same morning masses and Eucharistic adorations that I attend in various churches in the area, I knew her core had to be as torn as was mine. We exited the front door of our church, with our pastor in tow, knowing it was certainly not his will to be quite literally locking us out of a memorial observance of Jesus’ crucifixion.  

Nonetheless, here I stood with another solitary worshiper on the outside our Father’s house on Good Friday at the hour of Jesus’ passing, wondering just how the archdiocese could possibly imagine any good could come of this dictate. How both wrong and awakened I became in the way our Father in Heaven began to speak to me was truly amazing and I heard Him only because I have begun listening better than I ever have been.  

With neither of us wanting to leave, my solitary prayer partner and I sat in disbelief in an outside garden in front of a statue of Mary trying so very hard to process what just had occurred. Again, the questions persisted for both of us. Why couldn’t we stay? Who would know and care if just two more were there besides the invited guests. Why leave an entire church empty but for a chosen three. As we sat there in a very cold April wind, we each shared stories of our faith’s journey and prayer before wet snow and rain forced us to our cars, ending our Good Friday observance.

Not wanting to return home to more COVID-induced cabin fever, I also had an overwhelming sense to just drive and process a bit more of the afternoon’s events. It was then that I heard the words. Mathew’s verse (22:14) began to ring over and over in my head. I could not stop hearing these words at this particular moment as they seemed so appropriate… “For many are called, but few are chosen.” There was no use trying to dismiss the lesson unfolding.  

More thoughts began to emerge when it suddenly and so very plainly hit me…the message, the takeaway from this entire series of coincidences … that the painful and so bitterly crushing emptiness that I felt from being locked out of my place of worship, to be shown the door so to speak as I was not an invited guest was my Father in Heaven telling me in the clearest way possible – “Michael, don’t miss being with me for eternity. I love you more than you can know and gave up my life for you. I have shown you today but a glimpse of how you would feel to be without me for eternity.”  

It was then that I recalled a part of another biblical parable (Luke 13:25)… “Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’” It was upon remembering this passage from Scripture that my thoughts turned back to the pastor’s words I heard and the church of which I had just been locked out of.

The parallelism was scarily evident; the lesson was made so very clear - that unless I follow my Father’s will, I could be left standing outside, that I could be denied the presence of being with Jesus thru eternity, that I could never be welcomed into one of the many rooms Jesus said His Father has prepared for me. 

Being shunned from church today for a very different reason nevertheless proved quite clearly that I know with certainty I cannot live in the here and now without my faith in God. It pains me greatly not to participate in Sunday mass and the Eucharist. How then could I ever spend eternity without Jesus?  Knowing today that some two millennia ago, Jesus gave his life for me as an opportunity to share in his Father’s Kingdom reminds me so very clearly that I need to live my life much more like an invited guest in His house, for I  could never bear to hear the words “I don’t know you” from my Father. That would truly be the very definition of hell.

Thank you Lord for speaking to me this day and for my Good Friday epiphany.