Something about today, Good Friday, keeps me grateful. To see him on the cross. To see hands outstretched. Head bent to the side. To see thorns like a crown pierced to his head. To see the nails, hands and feet nailed to the cross. To see the blood, the body, all the pain I know he must have felt. To know he still did this for me, keeps me grateful. I am able to live courageously, to hope confidently, to persevere defiantly because his feet and hands were nailed to a cross for me. Nothing but the cross carries me beyond myself, beyond this place, beyond these moments I find myself in. Nothing but the cross helps me recognize and know that I am full of possibilities, my dreams are endless, and together we will not merely survive, but live over and over again. Nothing but the cross.

I grew up in Lagos Nigeria, always looking forward to Good Friday mass. Maybe it was the processions we often watched. As a child stations of the cross was very dramatic back then and we would follow a procession that narrated Jesus’s experience up until his death on the cross. Then we would head to church and these words ‘it is finished,’ often left me in tears. Since we moved to the US, I have never seen a procession but we do our part to ensure that we are in church every Good Friday. I am still in awe of this day that I decided to write a little reflection as to why above. I hope you remember always how the cross came along and saved all of us. We are all nothing without the cross.