A different Good Friday

A dramatic short story with reference to the Holy Passions

A different Good Friday

Early in the morning, North on the horizon began to turn blue. Here and there the wind grew stronger, sending the clouds to run across the South. The rustling of leaves on the trees broke the icy silence that spread over the city. The scent of wildflowers on any piece of land that had remained alive reached a few lucky passers-by who hurriedly accelerated their step to their limited and demarcated exit to the open space.

Good Friday morning…

A completely different Good Friday from the ones we lived. A strange silence was spreading in the city. Sometimes such a day is boisterous, with an alien bee human immersed in late consumerism carrying its treatises. But there were also memories or moments of people referring to other references. The descent of the Cross had not yet ended in the churches. Old housewives and young people were preparing for the noon trek to the cemeteries. It was their day today. Day of the Dead. Of those who had left. Day reference to natural and untimely losses, to logical losses but also abortive together.

The ringing of the bell is slow, heavy and mournful. It marked the day. Noon. The lilacs were musked in the orchards. The sky was beginning to weigh down, also participating in a silent mourning. The lists of the name of our dead people were prepared full of emotion. The memory, the nostalgia, the pain, the unjust, the natural. The always unbearable death that every human being is unable to manage. And the list of memory was full. Fathers, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, children… There he clasped his hand to write. He hesitated, he was weak. He did not believe that a parent would write his child’s name on this Good Friday memory list. It seemed like a nightmare full of pain.

And then, that great journey began. People steps. At first alone. After two or two. Then the number grew as the road weighed in the cemetery with the sad silent cypress trees. It became a river of people, a great procession that ran to meet them. To mention them, to greet them and to wish them a Resurrection that they would live separately.

Silent cries, clenched mouths, bruised fingers from the tightness, hands full of flowers, hollows with incense and smoke that ascended its own journey to heaven. And then the Epitaph. That great procession. The hymn from «Ai geneai nyn pasai…», His Cross, the procession, the exodus ceremony. His passage through the tombs, just the hope of a final greeting. Everything like that.

Only today, especially on this Good Friday, everything would be completely different. Everything would be weird. Out of place, weird. You see, the forced confinement of people in homes, the fear, the shadow of another wandering death reminded a lot of man. (Mention to COVID-19). Nobody expected it. It came suddenly, unexpectedly.

The roads were deserted. The heavy cloudy sky threw its weight unbearable everywhere. churches were closed and the only sound was that of the leaves on the trees from the north that were blowing. The bells stood silent, motionless. And the doors to the cemeteries were hermetically sealed. At night, as it came, the candles did not light while the roads were left desolate. And as the light of day gave way to that night of Good Friday, the human race remained sealed in their concrete houses accompanied by this unprecedented feeling of defeat. How was it possible for a human «civilization», with so much technology, with so many scientific miracles, to be defeated by an invisible, infinitesimal form of life. How was it possible?

Did it ever cross some people’s minds that, at some point in nature, life would show a different face to humans? Could it be that another force would threaten their own lowly sovereignty over the earth?

Such thoughts circulated in the minds of the inhabitants of the city as if darkness had fallen. And the streets were silent, empty, without the procession, without the praises, and the lighted candles.

And then, at nine o’clock, they were the first to see that their houses were near there! It started with a creepy rustle in the night. A sweet faint flickering light, which was growing slowly. He came out of the cemetery, from the houses of those who this Good Friday were left without flowers or the traditional pray. The light was slowly increasing. And in the stillness of the night, the first shadows would appear there. Light, silent. With small sliding steps.

They were the figures of women. Beautiful, they glowed in the night. They wore chlamys thrown all over their bodies. They had braided hair untied on the shoulders. A greenish wonderful light enveloped their unexpressed presence. They held candles in their hands and walked as if in the air. An incredible serenity was painted on their sweet faces. And a discreet sadness weighed on their eyes as it spread far and wide. Their white chlamydas rustled in the caress of the wind, painting incredible shapes in the light that surrounded them.

It was the memories and the nostalgia. Countless, expressive. The hopes. Unfulfilled dreams, repressed thoughts, moments that did not enter the fire of life, farewells that were not given, good days that were not said. The hugs that did not open, the «I love you» that were left half-finished on the lips. They were all there, one behind the other.

And then as that bright river had poured into the street the anthem was heard. It fades at first, louder then. «Generations now pass, praise your burial, offer my Christ”. «

You could see the frightened faces at the beginning of the enclosed people. With what terror and fear they welcomed that awkward procession locked in their homes. Something that for the first time they responded to their lives and experiences.

But the procession had no end. It spread on the road towards the houses. And then… behind the glowing figures you could see some others following them.

It was them! A whole lost world, men, women, old, young, children, made their own exit seeking to give their own place in the procession that did not take place. Let them carry His Cross, lift His own Epitaph on their shoulders.

The procession of the dead. Their faces are calm, expressionless, pale, almost transparent. Only their faces were formed in a fog that accompanied them. They must have carried small candles. Because they looked like little flaming stars in the night. A small river, bright, silent from figures that shone in the night.

As if they weighed close to the houses, as if they were now on the road to the city center, you could see them better. Spooky, calm, serene faces. Looks flat, icy. And as the flames from the candles in their hands flickered they formed a luminous path to the center of the state.

Then, at ten o’clock, the fear in the eyes of the incarcerated people became a tightness in the heart, sadness, tears in the eyes, anaphylaxis, crying loudly. It was trying to unite with the presence of those out there. You saw something so strange and eerie. Closed faces inside the houses. Countless faces and bodies glued to the windows and doors. With sore eyes. At the exact same time that this great procession was walking slowly in the air just outside their homes. The faces of women, the looks of people in the other world.

And then, as if at the back of the procession, further back in the afternoon, something else, something terrible, something that caused terror at first but then panic. Other forms followed the great procession. Only they were threatening. It was awesome. Their eyes were fiery, their hands far away, and they were moving hostilely through the fog. In their hands they held torches with a strong flame that threatened to burn and spoil.

It was the guilt, the remorse, the forgiveness that was never given, the «Ego» that was not moved, the arrogance that was not discouraged, the challenge that was not mitigated, the intolerance with the hatred that did not calm down. Murder, deceit, deception. There, at the end of the great march that had already spread to every street, to every alley, to every square and alley and had occupied the whole city. Forms that froze the eyes of people, that clearly showed their own superiority over human vanity and delusion.

Two worlds, a bright serene and a fiery nightmare. The two faces of truth under His roof. To Him who in His name were committed and are being hated crimes, in whose name the greatest hatred and the most lewd trade were built.

The human world was missing from that procession. He was hermetically sealed in the rooms of his houses, which now looked a lot like cages wrapped in darkness. With themselves screaming in fear and panic. To seek to leave as the fiery flames with the strange forms were now weighing in their yards.

Along with the deads and the losts, memories and moments came to meet. And little by little the crimes and the injustices. The regrets, the guilt and all the monsters that the human race gave birth to. Evil, malice, exploitation.

There was no end to this passage. Because another procession was following. That of the hungry, the ragged, the expelled strangers, the dead children who drowned and were crushed on the rocky and steep shores. Of the parents who left forgotten in icy nursing homes and demolished houses. Every weak, vulnerable and different, soul, forgotten for people, carrying its own label and descriptions.

Each procession separately, each procession in its own way. Each light in its own lamp. Each meaning in its own reasoning. Each form in its own shape.

Only high up in heaven was He standing! It was as if he was coming down from the «conditional speech». It was as if His stuttering voice could still be heard in our ears, «Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!» A voice forgotten, alienated, changed, sold out, by the world of people, that that Good Friday he had become an inactive imprisoned spectator of the great Hours of that day.

A Good Friday completely changed and different.

And about twelve o’clock those strange processions were lost at the exit of the city. Just as they came. The candles were slowly extinguished, this wonderful warm light was gone, the fiery torches were gone. The fog dissipated. Leaving the city again in icy silence. And the breaths in the breasts of confined people began to return to normal.

Before the light of the next day dawned, everyone wondered if the message left by those strange figures to cross the boundaries of this world, if the Holy Saturday dawn would give shape to thoughts about another world better or worse.

Today, Friday, April 22, 2022, orthodox Christians celebrate Good Friday. This story is dedicated to the symbolism of this Great Day.