It is Good Friday at New Melleray Abbey—an unnervingly quiet day. Mid-day meal today is bread and water. The community always has a book read to us at mid-day meal. Presently, we are reading: "The Future Church" by John Allen. But for the High Holy Days, we substitute special reading, and today's' reading affected me deeply. The author offered a meditation on the death of Christ, inviting us to look at the shadowy face on the Shroud of Turin. It doesn't actually look like the face of a dead man, but the face of a man profoundly at rest in prayer or meditation. As I pictured the face on the Shroud—a little shudder passed through me. All year long, at various points in the church's liturgy, we speak of the "death of Christ". Today, it's different. Today, the whole church gathers as one mind and heart to celebrate this mystery. In doing so, we are not so much remembering a past event as realizing with a sense of awe how present and real that past event is to us today. The dying of Christ is our reality today. He is dying in our world, and in each one of us. In the heart of each monk in the community, Christ sleeps the sleep of death and this is felt today. None of the monks says so, but I can feel it, there is a heightened sense of reality that puts all of us a little on edge on this day. Why? What is happening inside us? Imagining the face on the Shroud of Turin, I suddenly saw him: the Christ that lies entombed in me. It quite startled me to be looking straight into his face. It might have been a terrifying, even despairing experience, but, as the author suggests, this beautiful and absolutely distinctive face is not that of a dead man so much as of a man who waits in patience and sublime confidence for the revelation of a mystery that no words can express. I realize I have no hope in myself or from myself. Behind those closed lids are the impressions of my whole history of sin. Behind those gently closed lips is the judgment I deserve for those sins. The presence of this man who appears dead, is becoming more compelling as each moment passes. It is Him. It is the Lord who, in obedience to the Father, will die today and dying, very deliberately close his eyes and close his lips. Having seen all that can be seen about us and having said all that he could say to us, He lays himself down to sleep and waits.

Father Raphael