It is the final week of Jesus’ life. The long-awaited “hour” of his death, pent up for so long like water behind a dam that is suddenly released, strikes with blinding speed and savage fury.
Jesus’ many predictions, and indeed the prophecies of Scripture, are coming all too true. In quick succession, Jesus is betrayed (by Judas), arrested, bound, denied (three times by Peter), tried (by Jews and Romans), condemned as an insurrectionist, flogged, tortured, mocked, robbed and crucified.
While most of the disciples have fled, a small group of women that includes Mary Magdalene, who was delivered from the ghastly control of seven demons, stands mournfully but resolutely by the cross. It is what will come to be known as Good Friday.
Then Jesus, the Word who created the world, dies, his side pierced with a Roman spear just to make sure. The mangled body is taken down and laid in the nearby garden tomb of a heretofore secret follower named Joseph of Arimathea. Somehow, the stars do not fall from the sky. The Lamb of God who created them and who turned water into wine, who saved a dying boy from miles away, who restored a man lame for 38 years, who fed a multitude with five loaves and two fish, who walked across the stormy sea, who healed a man born blind and who called back his friend Lazarus from the realm of death has now gone there himself, taking with him the sins of the world.
A huge stone is rolled in front of the tomb. With the Sabbath rapidly approaching, the careful preparation of the bloody corpse for burial is only half done, which Mary from Magdala notices with anguish as day turns to night. She must wait for Sunday in order to finish the grim job, in one final act of devotion.