Death on a Friday Afternoon

I have to say, unequivocally, that Death on a Friday Afternoon, by Father Richard John Neuhaus, is the most profound book on the death of Christ and the meaning of it All that I’ve ever read. Every page has something deeply interesting, deeply moving, or deeply inspiring. Often I put the book down and just stare out into space, a new way of looking at things dangling before my eyes. I feel I definitely need to re-read it, though I only just reached the halfway-point last night. But I’m almost afraid to do so. It’s a daunting task, because the book requires your full attention. I’ve had it for five years but have never gotten beyond the first couple of pages until now. It is a good book to read for Lent, so I figure I will read it again next year.

Just last night I read this passage, which sums up all the ideas that have been channeled to me through various media outlets (books, websites, television, radio) that in some synchronous or synergetic fashion seem to be centering me. This passage makes so much sense to me that I want to quote it, as well as the stanza of the poem Father Neuhaus quotes. Think about it.


“Dereliction" is an apt word for the times we call modern. The essence of modernity, we are told, is that we live in a disenchanted world. God and the gods have withdrawn, if ever they were there in the first place. More recently in the cycles of cultural fashion, we have witnessed to advent of “postmodernity,” in which we are given permission to speak again about the gods, and maybe even about God. But the children of postmodernity know that they are making it up. Whether it is the ironic liberalism of tenured professors cleverly “deconstructing” reality or whether it is the popular peddling of New Age “spiritualities,” it is a matter of telling fairy tales. And no matter how many fairy tales we tell, when we know that they are fairy tales, they cannot re-enchant the world.

Something has been lost, something has been withdrawn, and it cannot be called back. It’s been now well over a century since Matthew Arnold sensed it happening in “Dover Beach”:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Does this not strike a chord, deep down, within you? And is it not the saddest note you’ve ever heard?