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Two weeks ago, the ecumenical Capital Area Council of Churches conducted their annual Good Friday service at our newly-renovated Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany.

It was a great blessing that representatives from all the Christian communities could celebrate together this central mystery of our faith: Christ's redemptive death unto Resurrection.

The service centered on the Stations of the Cross from Christ's trial before Pilate to His crucifixion and burial. Since Good Friday this year fell on Earth Day, the meditations which were given focused not only on our personal failures for which Jesus laid down His life, but also on the social/environmental sins and offenses which continue to plague our world.

CONDEMNED
The station of Jesus' condemnation to death reminds us of the appalling litany of oppressed people in our own memory: the Jews in Nazi Germany; Armenians in Turkey; Blacks in the United States; ethnic cleansing in Bosnia; Tutsi vs. Hutus in Rwanda; Palestinians in the occupied territories; Kurds in Iraq; Cambodians in Vietnam; Mayan Indians in Central America; and Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

STRUGGLING
The station portraying the cross being laid upon Simon of Cyrene calls to mind the 30 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed or who have given up the search for a job out of sheer frustration and fatigue; and the 47 million who are living below the federal poverty level - $23,000 a year for a family of four.

Indeed, one in five children and one in four Blacks and Hispanics in our nation bear the cross of poverty.

Worldwide, the statistics are even more appalling: One billion people live in extreme poverty (earning less than a dollar a day); 75 million children of school age are not enrolled in school; a quarter of a million women die in childbirth due to causes which are preventable; and nearly 10 million children never reach their fifth birthday.

STRIPPED
The station depicting Jesus being stripped of His garments recalls the devastating ways we deplete our natural resources: strip mining; deforestation; soil depletion through the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and defoliants; overfishing and overgrazing.

This station also brings to mind pressing questions about waste management, the storage of nuclear waste, the continuing disaster emanating from the oil spill in the U.S. Gulf Coast and the advisability of hydrofracking in the Marcellus shale of the Southern Tier in our Empire State.

CRUCIFIED
Jesus being nailed to the cross surfaces the landscape of horror around the globe: Libyan oil fields burning; refugees starving in the Ivory Coast; suicidal bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan; the development of nuclear arms in Iran and North Korea; and feuding warlords, ethnic conflicts and civil unrest across Northern Africa and the Middle East.

Closer to home, there are different sorts of destructive conflict: drug wars across international boundaries; gun violence in our urban areas; and street gangs recruiting vulnerable children and preying upon impoverished families.

DYING
The station commemorating Jesus' death on the cross of Calvary underscores how we continue to desecrate the four elements of creation - earth, air, fire and water - through the desertification of farmland; the toxic danger emanating from acid rain, oil spills and chemical dumps; the depletion of the ozone layer; radioactive pollution in Chernobyl, Japan and Three Mile Island; and the pollution of our lakes, rivers and oceans, as the PCB clean up in the Hudson River brings home so dramatically.

ABUSED
The body of Jesus being placed in the arms of His mother underscores the fact that abuse proliferates all aspects of human relationships.

It occurs in the most individual relationships and in the most institutional. It involves the sexual abuse of children; the trafficking of sex slaves; the objectification of women, especially through rape, domestic violence and pornography; the risks to men in such potentially traumatizing activities as mixed martial arts and bullfighting; and cruelty toward animals.

ENTOMBED
Finally, the station portraying Jesus being laid in the tomb reminds us of the men and women of our Armed Forces dying in the killing fields of Afghanistan and the civilian casualties of that war-weary nation; the senseless acts of terrorism, such as those perpetrated against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and those who were attending her Jan. 8 community meeting in Tucson, Arizona - which boggles the mind and leaves us wondering in what kind of society we live wherein gun violence is so prevalent; the fact that 15 months after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, despite overwhelming worldwide financial and other assistance, that poverty-stricken nation remains in shambles; and the humanitarian crisis in Japan created by an earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown.

The litany of gloom and doom which a reflection on the Stations of the Cross can evoke is overwhelming. We could all add our own sour note to this dirge of misery, suffering and ruin, including our own personal failures.

But the good news is that Christ's death on the cross of Calvary and burial in the tomb are not the end of the story. Rather, His resurrection on Easter - which we continue to celebrate during this Paschal season - reminds us, as the preface of the Easter Mass proclaims, "that in Him a new age has dawned, the long reign of sin has ended; a broken world is renewed and we once again are made whole."

As Christians, we don't deny the reality of sin and death all around us. We stare it in the face, because we know that, as sharers in Christ's resurrection, His victory is our victory, too.

As His followers, through the power of His resurrection, we have been given courage and strength for the struggle, instructions for the journey and assurance of ultimate triumph over the forces of evil which surround us.

As an Easter people, then, we have a natural Christian optimism - not a pollyanna-ish optimism that fails to recognize the inevitable traumas we face, but one which appreciates that the challenges swirling all around us are gradually being overcome by the power of the Risen One and are far surpassed by the blazing glory of the resurrection.

Hence, the fear, despair and polarization that can tend to cripple us are incompatible with our belief in Christ's death unto life. They are the parts of us, individually and collectively, that we need to hold up to the healing power of Christ's resurrection.

Indeed, if we see all of life's challenges in light of the resurrection, we will perceive beneath it all the hand of God and, thus, be able to say day after day with an ever increasing wonder and unshakeable confidence: "It is the Lord who has done this and we find it marvelous to behold." Amen, Alleluia![[In-content Ad]]

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