Being transported to the Cross

A Reflection for Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion

Find today’s readings here.

In college I was part of a student music ministry group. Around this time of year, one of the songs we sang and played at Mass was the African-American spiritual “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord).” If you haven’t heard it before, there are so many versions you can listen to, many recorded by popular artists. (I’m partial to this Harry Belafonte rendition.) The lyrics go something like this:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

As the verses continue, the singer asks the listener if she was there as different things happened. Were you there when they nailed him to the cross? When they pierced him in the side? When the sun refused to shine? When they laid him in the tomb?

The memory of the first time I rehearsed the piece with the group will stay with me for the rest of my life; as we sang one of the verses a cappella, our director guided us to start quietly, to swell with sound during one middle section’s “Oh” and then to drop back almost to a whisper when we repeated “tremble, tremble, tremble.” At some point I stopped singing. I just listened to the voices around me, sounding much more like one voice than many, and let a tear roll down my cheek. I wasn’t there when Christ was crucified, but while listening to that piece of music, paying such close attention to what it was trying to evoke, I almost felt like I was transported there.

Over the years I’ve revisited this song during Holy Week and on Good Friday, and I’ve been reminded of the power of its simplicity and specificity. It gives us the chance to reflect not just on the cosmic meaning of Good Friday before Easter Sunday, but also on the small and human details that Christ experienced at his death—and that the onlookers who witnessed it experienced in their own way.

Most of all, today on Good Friday, it invites us into a paradox: In one sense, none of us alive today were there when Jesus died on the Cross. And in another sense, we are present to his sacrifice—and to moments of crucified suffering—often enough to know why the song’s sentiment is so visceral.

Music can situate us spiritually in a time and place where we are not physically present. So can prayer. So can liturgy. And so can our attention to the suffering brothers and sisters we encounter as we move throughout our days. On this most somber memorial, may we be close to Jesus in his suffering. When they pierce him in the side and lay him in the tomb, may we be there—trembling.

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