A Good Friday reflection

The below post is lengthy but a nice read, I think. It came from a friend in Ohio, Maura McKeegan, who was moved to write after meditation on the Ninth Station of the Cross. It explores the importance of the number "3" in the Catholic faith.


"Jesus Falls the Third Time"
The strongest man who ever lived, freely gave up his strength for us. The universe, including every stone and stick onto which he fell along the road to Calvary, was created through him, belonged to him. He chose to let it bruise him, beat him, betray him. His ravaged legs buckled beneath the weight of the cross he carried, and he fell: once, then twice, then three times.

Only a few hours earlier, Jesus had asked his dearest, closest friends to stay awake with him while he prayed in the Garden. He knew what horrors awaited him, and he sought solace in his companions: Let me not endure this alone, but keep watch with me, that I might know you are with me. He went off to pray and returned to find them sleeping: once, then twice, then three times.

Later that same night, while Jesus suffered “thousands of insults, spits, blows, lacerations, and other unheard-of cruelties”* at the hands of his enemies, a cock crowed. Peter, who had vowed never to forsake Jesus, had just denied even knowing him: once, then twice, then three times.

The following day, in the most desolate hours of human history, Jesus hung on the Cross: for one hour, then two, then three. And in the third, he breathed his last and gave up his spirit.

Two thousand years later, the number three still seems to escort the dark hour of abandonment and death. On September 11, 2001, planes flew headfirst and deliberately into buildings filled with thousands of people: one building, then a second, then a third.

In another tragedy of unthinkable scope, millions of women are being deceived into using a pill that claims to “prevent” life from forming in their wombs. Hailed as a modern miracle, the birth control pill works in three ways. First, it tries to prevent ovulation. Second, it tries to stop sperm from reaching the egg. Third, if all else fails, it prevents a newly conceived life from attaching to the womb of the mother, so that the baby cannot receive the nourishment it needs to live and starves to death. The doctors who prescribe the pill know this may happen, but they don’t warn the mother. She never knows she had a son, a daughter. The lie hangs like a dense, unlifting fog over whole nations. The birth control pill secretly, silently snuffs out life: it tries one way, then two, and on the third, like two thousand years before, the innocent victim falls.

These situations that seem hopeless, where evil and despair seem to reign, all bear a common mark: the number three. Why three, the precious number, the very image of the Trinity? How could God allow this holy number to be tarnished? Why would he permit such a cruel paradox, where the very number that reminds us of him is the very number that accompanies such evil?

Like many things of God, at first glance it doesn’t seem to make sense. But like Mary Magdalene and the women accompanying her on Easter morning, we must go to the tomb to learn the Truth.

After Jesus’ death on the cross, he was laid in the tomb where he remained lifeless: one day, then two. And then, on the third day, he rose. He conquered evil, sin, and death, and he brought the promise of everlasting life to the same world that had forsaken him. A situation that seemed hopeless became the very thing that brings us hope.

Could it be that from all eternity, Jesus stamped “three” on the circumstances where hope is most needed? If I look back over every one of these tragedies, painted in the light of the Resurrection, I can hear him saying: Even though this situation may look desolate, I am here. I am Three, and I will redeem. It is not an omen but a witness of his enduring promise of forgiveness and grace.

Three is the God who gave Peter a chance to convert each one of his denials into affirmations: “Peter, do you love me?” Jesus asked; “Yes, Lord,” Peter replied, once, twice, three times.

Three is the God who beckons his dearest friends to adoration in the middle of the night, that they may keep watch with him still, and they come: at one o’clock, at two, at three.

Three is the God who still creates new souls by uniting a husband and wife, and enabling them to share in the miracle of his creative power: first one person, then two together, and the two create a third.

Three is the God from whose heart Divine Mercy gushes forth upon the world each day and night at three o’clock, turning the hour of death into the hour of life.

Three is the Triune God who binds himself to the darkest of nights and the hardest of hearts so that we may know that where there is Three, there is hope.

*The St. Bridget Prayers