Kazuo Shiraga (Japanese, 1924–2008), Untitled, 1964. Oil on canvas, 51 1/2 × 76 3/8 in. (130.8 × 194 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
LISTEN: “Glory Be to Jesus” (original title: “Viva! viva! Gesù”) | Words: Anon., Italian, 18th century; trans. Edward Caswall, 1857 | Music by Friedrich Filitz, 1847 | Performed by Wes Crawford on Hymns for This World and the Next, 2024
Glory be to Jesus, who, in bitter pains, poured for me the lifeblood from his sacred veins.
Grace and life eternal in that blood I find; blest be his compassion, infinitely kind.
Blest through endless ages be the precious stream which from endless torments did the world redeem.
Oft as earth exulting wafts its praise on high, angel hosts rejoicing make their glad reply.
Lift we, then, our voices, swell the mighty flood, louder still and louder praise the precious blood!
Kazuo Shiraga, Untitled (detail), 1964. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
Andrea Mantegna (Italian, ca. 1431–1506), The Crucifixion, 1457–59. Tempera on panel, 75 × 96 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. [object record]
There’s much to look at in this painting. I want to focus on Jesus’s grieving mother under the cross to our left.
In Renaissance art of the Crucifixion, Mother Mary is often shown swooning, supported by John or by one of her female companions. Here she’s with a group of four women—the other Marys—two of whom wrap an arm around her to bolster her up when her legs give out. Her son has just died, and she can’t bear to look.
This work was painted by Andrea Mantegna between 1457 and 1459 as the central element of the predella (base) of the high altarpiece at San Zeno in Verona, Italy, a monumental work of art. In 1797, French Napoleonic forces plundered the altarpiece and brought it to Paris; the country returned the three main panels to Verona in 1815 when Napoleon lost power, but they kept the three predella panels, which are on display in museums: The Crucifixion at the Louvre, and The Agony in the Garden and The Resurrection at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours.
LISTEN: “Swete Sone” | Words: Anon., 14th century (before 1372) | Music by Katharine Blake, 1998 | Performed by Mediæval Bæbes on Worldes Blysse, 1998
This song is in Middle English. If you’re reading along with the lyrics, you’ll want to know that the letter thorn, þ, says th; and u makes a w or v sound. I’ve bracketed the two words that the Mediæval Bæbes leave out.
Suete sone, reu on me, & brest out of þi bondis; For [nou] me þinket þat i se, þoru boþen þin hondes, Nailes dreuen in-to þe tre, so reufuliche þu honges. Nu is betre þat i fle & lete alle þese londis.
Suete sone, þi faire face droppet al on blode, & þi bodi dounward is bounden to þe rode; Hou may þi modris herte þolen so suete fode, Þat blissed was of alle born & best of alle gode!
Suete sone, reu on me & bring me out of þis liue, For me þinket þat i se þi detȝ, it neyhit suiþe; Þi feet ben nailed to þe tre—nou may i no more þriue, For [al] þis werld with-outen þe ne sal me maken bliþe.
Sweet son, have pity on me, and break out of your bonds; For I think I see through both your hands Nails have been driven into the tree, so painfully you hang there. It would be better if I fled now and abandoned all these lands.
Sweet son, your beautiful face is dripping with blood, And your body beneath is bound to the cross; How will your mother’s heart endure [the suffering of] such a sweet child, Who was born most blessed of all and was the most goodly of all!
Sweet son, have pity on me and deliver me from this life, For I think I see your death approaches quickly; Your feet have been nailed to the tree—now I may never prosper, For without you, all this world can never make me happy.
These three monorhyming quatrains are from John of Grimestone’s commonplace book, where he jotted down material for sermons; it’s unknown whether they’re original to him or compiled from some other source. (For other lyrics I’ve featured from this notebook, see “Undo Thy Door, My Spouse Dear” and “Love Me Brought.”)
In the poem, written in Mother Mary’s voice, Mary reveals a premonition she’s had of her son being nailed on a tree to die. (At least that’s how I read it, mainly because of the “I think I sees.”) She agonizes over this nightmare and asks Jesus that if it be true, to deliver her from this life, as she won’t be able to endure the sorrow of losing him.
Verses like these really humanize Mary, a woman who, faithful though she was to God’s unfolding plan, nevertheless felt the intense parental pangs that inevitably accompany witnessing one’s child being brutalized and killed.
The poem has been set to medieval-style music by Katharine Blake, the founder of Mediæval Bæbes, a classical chart–topping British music ensemble celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year.
The song opens with an unaccompanied solo voice singing in free time. In the second half of the first stanza, additional voices enter, as well as a strummed instrument. Then with “& þi bodi dounward is bounden to þe rode,” the tempo quickens; a 2/4 meter takes shape and regularizes, with percussion keeping the beat; and the volume amplifies with twelve women now singing. With the final stanza, there’s once again a softening as the song returns to a single vocalist and the instrumentation drops out. This movement from weary pain, Mary barely able to speak it aloud, to foot-stomping anger, which her friends join in solidarity, and back to solitary desolation captures different shades of grief.
For a wholly a cappella solo rendition, see this performance by Ariana Ellis:
They will mock him and spit upon him and flog him and kill him . . .
—Mark 10:34
LOOK: Sacred Head II: The Mocking by Bruce Herman
Bruce Herman (American, 1953–), Sacred Head II: The Mocking, from the Florence Portfolio, 1994. Intaglio, edition 48/50, sheet 21 1/2 × 30 1/8 in., image 17 3/4 × 23 5/8 in. Collection of Victoria Emily Jones.
The Florence Portfolio is a suite of twenty intaglio prints based on the biblical theme of sacrifice, made by six artists from Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) who lived and worked together for a month in Florence, Italy. I purchased two limited-edition portfolio prints—this one, and Wayne Forte’s Deposition—from the CIVA store shortly before the organization closed its operations in 2023.
A tightly cropped image of Christ’s blindfolded face, Bruce Herman’s Sacred Head II: The Mocking conveys disorientation. Hands slapping, shoving, pounding. Spittle on the cheek, in the ear. A nest of thorns piercing the scalp. Taunting epithets and derisive laughter. A cracking scourge. This is only a fraction of the violence and humiliation Christ suffered in the hours before his death.
Pilate took Jesus and flogged him Soldiers, they twisted a crown of thorns And put it on his head And arrayed him in a purple robe
Hail, King of the Jews! Hail, King of the Jews!
And they struck him with their hands And when they had mocked him They stripped him of the purple robe And put on his own clothes And they led him away To crucify him
They went to a place called Gethsemane, and [Jesus] said . . . “My soul is deeply grieved, even to death. . . . Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me, yet not what I want but what you want.”
—Mark 14:32, 34, 36
LOOK: Can you drink the cup I am about to drink? by John Kiefer
John Kiefer (American, 1944–), Can you drink the cup I am about to drink?, 1999. Sterling silver and other metals, 10 × 3 × 3 in. Bowden Collections, Chatham, Massachusetts.
Fr. John Kiefer is a Catholic priest, metalsmith, and woodworker from Indiana. His piece Can you drink the cup I am about to drink? is from the collection of Sandra and Bob Bowden in Chatham, Massachusetts, and is part of the traveling exhibition they loan out called Come! The Table Is Ready.
Can you drink is a silver chalice enwrapped ominously, cup and foot, by thorns. In the Bible, a cup often symbolizes one’s portion or destiny that comes from God. Jesus’s cup entails suffering and premature death. Deeply distraught, Jesus asks his Father, if it be possible, to remove the cup.
Request denied.
Within eighteen hours of voicing this prayer, Jesus is taken, tried, tortured, and killed—“tast[ing] death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9).
Some biblical commentators have interpreted the cup Jesus must drink as God’s wrath over sin, as that metaphor—cup as bitter-tasting divine punishment poured out—was a common one in the ancient Near East, including in the Bible. But that doesn’t make sense if we pull in what Jesus says to James and John earlier, in Matthew 20:22 (cf. Mark 10:38): “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They affirm yes, and Jesus corroborates: “You will indeed drink my cup . . .”
This is why the cup is best understood more generally as one of suffering. So argues Raymond E. Brown in his magisterial two-volume work The Death of the Messiah, albeit conceding that “some of the connotation of the classical cup of wrath or judgment may be preserved in Mark [14:36], not in the sense that Jesus is the object of wrath, but inasmuch as his death will take place in the apocalyptic context of the great struggle of last times when God’s kingdom overcomes evil” (1:170).
Archimandrite Seraphim Bit-Kharibi [previously] is an Assyrian Orthodox priest living in the country of Georgia. He is one of the few priests in the world who celebrates the Divine Liturgy in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The video above shows him chanting the words Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his execution.
I wasn’t able to find the full text he uses (and my email inquiry went unanswered), but I’m fairly sure the core is this:
This painting by the late Ukrainian artist Ostap Lozynsky portrays a handful of episodes from Passion Week: Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, the Last Supper, the Kiss of Judas, Christ before Pilate, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, Peter’s denial (represented emblematically by the rooster), Christ taking up his cross, Christ being nailed to the cross, the Crucifixion, and the Lamentation over the Dead Christ.
From liner notes of PRIMEMOVER by Joshua Stamper. Pinch to zoom, or if on a computer, right-click and open the image in a new tab to enlarge.
Joshua Stamper is “a transdisciplinary artist and composer whose work explores hiddenness, revelation, ephemera, and archive.” Commissioned by Resurrection Philadelphia, his “Stations: Is It I” composition collages spoken “words of prayer, cursing, praise, fury, hope, despair—from disciples, politicians, priests, crowds, soldiers, the curious,” all parties connected to Jesus’s final week. The texts are taken from scripture.
The cacophony is stressful. Maybe you turned off the recording before it finished, unable to bear it. I encourage you to stick with it for the full four minutes and twenty-one seconds, as a way of sitting with the discomfort and chaos of Christ’s passion, of entering into this story that’s at the center of the church’s proclamation.
Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, Alqosh, Iraq, 1723, from a Syriac Gospel lectionary. Collection of the Dominican Friars of Mosul (DFM 13, fol. 43v). Digitized in collaboration with the Centre Numérique des Manuscrits Orientaux (CNMO), Ankawa, Erbil, Iraq.
Made three centuries ago at a monastery in Iraq, this is one of three figurative paintings from a Syriac Gospel lectionary, the other two depicting Thomas touching Jesus’s wounds and the apocryphal saint George defeating a dragon. While the scribe is named in the manuscript as ʼEliyā bar Yaldā, the artist, if he is a different person (as they usually were), is not identified.
I love the fanciful coloration! Yellow and orange for the donkey, and a tricolored road of yellow, blue, and green. Plus, in the background, fruiting tree branches that climb and curl. The red striations on the figures’ necks and faces are, as far as I know, an idiosyncratic aesthetic choice of the artist’s; they may signify blood running through the veins, or perhaps the marks are simply decorative.
While the donkey is shown in profile, clopping along toward Jerusalem’s city center, Jesus rides sidesaddle and is oriented toward us, his eyes meeting ours. He holds a scroll in one hand, signifying that he is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies (most directly in this moment, Zechariah 9:9), and his right hand, which is heavily stylized, I can only assume is raised in a gesture of blessing, as it is in many other images of this subject.
At his feet, the people spread their cloaks, a sign of reverence.
Addendum: The following video of Palm Sunday celebrations in Iraq showed up in my Instagram feed a few hours after I published this blog post, and I thought it fitting to add.
LISTEN: “Hosanna! (Matthew 21:9 & 11)” by Frank Hernandez, for Steve Green’s Hide ’Em in Your Heart: Bible Memory Melodies, 1990 | Performed by Susanna and Rosalia, 2026
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna in the highest Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna, this is Jesus
Blessed is he (blessed is he) who comes in the name of the Lord Blessed is he (blessed is he) who comes in the name of the Lord
Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna in the highest Hosanna to the Son of David Hosanna, this is Jesus
Hosanna (Hosanna) Hosanna (in the highest) Hosanna (Hosanna) Hosanna, this is Jesus
I learned this song two years ago when two girls from my church, sisters, sang it during the offertory for our Palm Sunday worship service. I asked them if they’d be willing to reprise their performance for my blog, as I love the sweetness of their voices together, and they obliged. They are thirteen and eleven years old.
Palm Sunday is an especially great day to utilize the children’s voices in your congregation for music or other parts of the liturgy, as Matthew mentions in his account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem that “when the chief priests and the scribes . . . heard the children crying out in the temple and saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they became angry and said to [Jesus], ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself” [Ps. 8:2]?’” (Matt. 21:15–16).
“Hosanna” is an expression that in this context means something like “Hooray for salvation!,” as John Piper puts it.
The enthusiasm of the masses upon Jesus’s arrival in Judea’s capital city for Passover, and especially their ascription to him of the messianic title “Son of David” (not to mention “prophet” and “wonderworker”), raised the hackles of the temple leadership. He was a threat to their authority and status and to their understanding of the scriptures. So they purposed, in collusion with Rome, to put him to death.
Other than the second one, captioned with a copyright notice, all photos in this article are my own.
When visiting the Landesmuseum (State Museum) in Hanover, Germany, last fall, I was struck by a monumental medieval altarpiece depicting thirty-six scenes from the life of Christ. Scholars refer to it as the Goldene Tafel (Golden Panel) after the now-lost large gold repoussé plaque, originally designed (most likely) as an antependium in the twelfth century, that was once at the center of its inner display, depicting Christ seated in a mandorla flanked by the twelve apostles.
The “Goldene Tafel” (Golden Panel), made for the church of St. Michael’s monastery in Lüneburg, Germany, ca. 1420–30. Tempera and gold leaf on oak, each panel 231 × 184 cm (overall 231 × 736 cm). Landesmuseum Hannover, Germany, WM XXIII, 27. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
One of the most important northern German works in the International Gothic style, the altarpiece was created in the 1420s for the high altar of the newly built Benedictine monastery of St. Michael in Lüneburg. It was the work of carpenters, sculptors, and two painters, one from the circle of the Westphalian artist Conrad von Soest, and the other probably based in Cologne or even Lüneburg.
The Golden Panel altarpiece, in its original design, had two pairs of hinged wings that could be opened or closed over a fixed central shrine, offering three possible configurations. The shrine, irrecoverably robbed in 1644 and 1698, housed the monastery’s treasury, especially its reliquaries, displayed in a cabinet of twenty-two richly decorated rectangular compartments surrounding the eponymous, aforementioned “golden panel.” This main body of the altarpiece (called the corpus) was dismantled in 1792–94 and its remaining objects melted or sold. The predella (base) has also been lost.
However, the wings, replete with panel paintings and figural sculptures, have survived to the present day and, having been restored in 2016–19, are proudly displayed at the Landesmuseum Hannover for visitors to enjoy. When you enter the gallery, you are greeted with the full cycle of thirty-six painted scenes (nine per panel) from the life of Christ, read from left to right in long rows. Then you can walk behind to see the panels’ other sides, which would not have been simultaneously on view to the monks of St. Michael’s with the altarpiece’s original construction.
The scale model in the following photograph gives you a good sense of the three distinct viewing states that were originally possible.
View 1, the closed view, juxtaposes a scriptural type and antitype: the brazen serpent in the wilderness, raised on a pole for the life of the people, and the crucifixion of Christ.
Numbers 21:4–9 tells of how, wandering the desert after God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites complained about how life was better before. As punishment for their ingratitude, God sent poisonous serpents into their camp, and fatalities ensued. The people realized their sin and repented, asking Moses to intercede with God for relief. God told Moses to craft a bronze serpent and lift it high on a pole, and to instruct the people that if they are bitten, to look on the sculpture and they will be spared.
In John 3:14–15, Jesus interpreted this story as foreshadowing his being raised on a cross to bring healing: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he told Nicodemus, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
The anonymous artist shows the gleaming snake on a tau cross that mirrors the one Jesus hangs on in the opposite panel. The lower banderole reads, from the Vulgate, “Peccavimus quia locuti sumus contra Dominum et te ora ut tollat a nobis serpentes” (We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and thee: pray that he may take away these serpents). I can’t make out the text on the upper banderole, other than aspexerit, “shall look,” but presumably it communicates God’s antidote to the snake bites.
And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord. And Aaron and the children of Israel seeing the face of Moses horned, were afraid to come near. (Douay–Rheims)
Almost all English translations say instead that Moses’s face “shone” or “became radiant,” interpreting qaran as horned with rays of light. This artist splits the difference and shows, growing out from under Moses’s hat, two bony protrusions that are luminous!
The Crucifixion scene shows a Roman spearman piercing Jesus’s side to confirm his death, while Jesus’s mother, two other Marys, and the apostle John mourn under his right hand. A centurion in the crowd exclaims, “Vere Filius Dei erat iste” (Truly this man was the Son of God).
When these two outer panels were opened in their day, they would reveal view 2 of the altarpiece (pictured at top of article), or the first open view, displaying scenes from Jesus’s infancy, passion, and resurrection across four panels.
The Annunciation; The Visitation; The Nativity; The Raising of Lazarus; Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; Christ Carrying His Cross; Christ in Distress; The CrucifixionThe Annunciation to the Shepherds; The Circumcision of Christ; The Adoration of the Magi; Christ Washing His Disciples’ Feet; The Agony in the Garden (2); The Deposition; The Entombment; The Harrowing of HellThe Presentation in the Temple; The Massacre of the Innocents; The Flight to Egypt; The Arrest of Christ; Christ before Pilate; Christ before Herod; The Resurrection; The Holy Women at the Tomb; The AscensionChrist among the Doctors in the Temple; The Wedding at Cana; The Baptism of Christ; The Flagellation of Christ; Ecce Homo; The Mocking of Christ; The Descent of the Holy Spirit; The Death of the Virgin; The Coronation of the Virgin
I’ll share a few of my favorite scenes.
The Nativity features what I call the industrious Joseph motif [previously], as rather than sitting off to the side with his head in his hands, as he’s commonly shown, Jesus’s dad is hard at work trying to make his family comfortable. He pumps a bellows to supply air to the small fire he has going, either to warm his wife and child or, as he does in a handful of other medieval German Nativities, to cook a simple meal. Mary reclines with the infant Christ on a woven straw mattress while angels peek in from over a curtain to adore him.
The Last Supper I found especially charming because of how the apostle John shelters under Jesus’s cloak, relaxed, secure. The image of John resting on Jesus’s breast rose to popularity in fourteenth-century Germany, a commemoration of the two’s bosom friendship and a call to, like John, abide in Christ. It’s based on the description in John 13:23, which says that at Jesus’s last meal, at Passover time, “one of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining close to his heart.” This verse alludes to the typical eating posture assumed at ancient Greco-Roman banquets, at which men reclined with their heads near a low table and their feet pointing away from it. But in Christian interpretation it has come to signify, more than simply a seating arrangement, the proximity of John to the heart of Christ.
In the Golden Panel’s Last Supper, Jesus enfolds John much like a mother hen would her chick (cf. Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34), his garment like a wing. Even in this moment before his greatest trial, when most would be inclined to turn inward, Jesus shows concern for those he loves—he covers, protects. And nourishes. He stretches his hand across the table, laid with dishes of lamb and fish, to feed Judas a morsel of bread that resembles a eucharistic wafer. He sups with the man he knows will betray him. He does not turn him away.
Further along in the narrative, the scene of Christ carrying his cross with the help of Simon of Cyrene stands out to me because of the man pulling Jesus’s hair as he walks. The cruel mocking and assault continue outside the courtroom and en route to Golgotha.
Called Christus im Elend (Christ in Distress) or Christus in der Rast (Christ at Rest), the subject depicted in the bottom center of the far left panel first started appearing in northern Germany in the second half of the fourteenth century. It shows Jesus sitting pensively, usually on a stone, waiting for his cross to be raised.
In the Golden Panel, Jesus, naked, bleeds all over while the soldiers roll dice and fight over who will get to keep his seamless tunic. The two men in the foreground, one with a flagrum tucked in his belt, tumble and tear at each other, pulling and biting, exemplifying the human penchant for violence that will culminate in the killing of God’s Son. (The basket of hammer and nails that has been procured for the task sits temporarily off to the side.) Combative and puerile, this is the humanity Christ has come to save.
The interior Crucifixion painting is fairly standard, but oh, isn’t it lovely? One notable feature is how Christ’s blood flows from his side, his final wound, down to his groin, where he received, at eight days old, his first wound, the cutting off of his foreskin in a ritual circumcision. Scholars such as Leo Steinberg have remarked how this diversion of the blood’s natural path (which would be to the right thigh) was an intentional device some painters used to connect these two sheddings of blood, and thus the incarnation and the atonement.
Moving two pictures down the line, the Entombment scene caught my eye because of the tender care shown to the dead Christ before he’s laid to rest. Nicodemus anoints Christ’s wounds with myrrh and aloes, applying them with a spatula, while Joseph of Arimathea, who has donated his tomb, prepares to enshroud the body.
In a quintessential Easter scene, three faithful women come to the burial site after the Sabbath to complete the anointing ritual, only to find a finely feathered angel perched atop the skewed lid of Christ’s now-empty sarcophagus. Mary Magdalene, holding a golden jar, points into the vacant space as if to ask, “Where’s my Lord?” To which the angel responds that he is risen!
View 3 (Partial): Sculptures of the Saints
View 3 of the Golden Panel altarpiece—the fully open view, saved for important feast days—cannot be replicated because the shrine that formed the corpus is lost. But flanking the shrine would have been two wings that have survived largely intact, displaying polychrome wood sculptures of twenty (mostly male) saints and, in the intermediate row, smaller statuettes of six female saints (the other six are missing).
The identities of the main figures are listed below. The ones I couldn’t confirm but for which I proffer my best guess are followed by a question mark.
Top left: John the Baptist, Thomas(?), Matthew, Simon(?), George
Top right: Mary Magdalene, Lawrence (deacon), Benedict, Cyriacus (deacon), Michael
Bottom left: Madonna and Child, Peter, Paul, James the Lesser(?), James the Greater
Bottom right: Bartholomew, John the Evangelist, Jude (Thaddeus)(?), Andrew, Philip
In the sculpture of the Madonna and Child, Mary holds an inkwell that Jesus dips his pen into as he writes on a scroll. How delightful! It’s a rare iconography but one that’s shared by the Tintenfassmadonna in Hildesheim Cathedral, sculpted around the same time.
The figure to the right of Mary is Peter. He holds a handle with a dowel hole on the underside; originally, a set of keys was attached to it and hung down.
The diminutive figure above Mary is Catherine of Alexandria, identifiable by the fragmented wheel she holds, a symbol of her martyrdom.
To learn more about the Golden Panel, see the book Die Goldene Tafel aus Lüneburg, edited by Antje-Fee Köllermann and Christine Unsinn (Michael Imhof, 2021), from the Niederdeutschen Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte (Low German Contributions to Art History) series. Only three of its twenty-five chapters are in English; the rest is in German. It’s highly technical, the product of an interdisciplinary research project carried out from 2012 to 2016. There’s not much in it about the actual content of the images. But it provides ample color illustrations, which I always appreciate, as well as stylistic comparisons, historical inventories, and more.
Holy Week starts this Sunday. Per usual, I’ll be publishing daily art and music pairings during that period (so, too, during the Easter Octave), but here is some additional art and music, and a theological reflection, for the occasion. You might also consider spending time with the Holy Week Playlist I curated on Spotify.
TENEBRAE SERVICE: Good Friday, April 2, 2021, Good Shepherd New York: Not all churches host a service on Good Friday, but for me, it is one of the most meaningful services of the year and helps make Easter all the more potent and celebratory. It wasn’t until 2011 that I attended my first Good Friday service—of the Tenebrae variety, Latin for “darkness,” meaning we started with multiple lit candles, and they were gradually extinguished throughout the evening, symbolizing the Light of the World dying out. If you’re curious about what such a service might look like, here’s a great example from 2021, from Good Shepherd New York. Filmed during the pandemic, it was a digital-only offering. As is typical, it combines song and scripture readings to tell the story of Christ’s death. Some Tenebrae services include a brief homily, but this one does not. I’ve included a list of time stamps to the songs below.
1:15: “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Isaac Watts and Lowell Mason
6:26: “I Need Thee Every Hour” by Annie Hawks and Robert Lowry
24:28: “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townend
31:08: “Remember Me” by Paul Zach
35:50: “Were You There?,” African American spiritual (with a watercolor by Soyoung L Kim, inscribed with Isaiah 53:11a: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied”)
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INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC FOR GOOD FRIDAY: The one Facebook group I belong to is Liturgy Fellowship; I joined when I was a worship planner and stick around because of the many great resources, especially musical ones and ideas for marking holy days as a congregation, that are shared by Christians across denominations. One post I made note of is from Andrew Kerhoulas, the associate pastor at Grace Mills River in Mills River, North Carolina. As a prelude for their 2023 Good Friday service, he said, Grace Mills River musicians played an excerpt from the fifth movement of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Here’s the full movement, performed by cellist Bingxia Lu and pianist Jackie Tu:
“The piece is avant-garde and not a little abrasive to those with pop music sensibilities,” Kerhoulas wrote to the group. “But once you know that it was written in 1941 by a French prisoner of war while in a German prison and first performed for fellow prisoners, it takes on depths of meaning. So too the cross: It is grotesque and horrific, but it becomes meaningful and even beautiful when you know the occasion—the deeper story—in which Jesus gave up his life.”
The church concluded its Good Friday service with a string quintet postlude, “On the Nature of Daylight” by Max Richter, played to the dimming of lights. Again, the following performance is not from Grace Mills River, but rather by Louisa Fuller, Natalia Bonner, John Metcalfe, Chris Worsey, and Ian Burdge for the fifteenth anniversary edition of The Blue Notebooks album.
Some people think that music used in Christian worship as a focal piece (i.e., not in the background) needs to have words to be worshipful and productive. I strongly disagree. Instrumental music conveys beauty and sets a mood and, yes, even communicates—often that which is difficult to express verbally. I love Grace’s thoughtful inclusion of these two modern and contemporary pieces from the classical tradition in their community’s observance of Good Friday.
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ART COMPILATION: “Crucifixion: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts” by Levon Ounanian: This compilation brings together thirty-one Armenian miniatures of Christ’s passion. (Miniatures are painted illustrations in a manuscript, so called not because they’re small, though they usually are, but because artists often sketched them using a red lead pigment called minium.) According to the author, of the 31,000 Armenian manuscripts currently listed around the world, about 6,000 of them contain miniatures, not to mention the many more that contain non-narrative decoration.
Mesrop of Khizan (Armenian, active in Persia, ca. 1560–ca. 1652), The Nailing on the Cross, from an Armenian Gospel book, 1609. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Arm. d.13, fol. 13v. Click to view the fully digitized manuscript.
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SONG: “Saare Paap” (सारे पाप) (All Sins), performed by James Bovas: In this video, James Bovas [previously] performs a Hindi version of a Malayam song about the Crucifixion. The Hindi lyrics and English translation were supplied to me by the Indian gospel media production company Sarah Creation.
सारे पाप और दाग ममटाकर, मुक्क्त देने के मलए मुक्क्त दाता ने बहाया, खून अपना क्रूस से खून के प्यासे भेडियों ने, आके घेरा यीशु को मारे कोिे टोकी कीले, धारे ननकली ज़ख्मों से मेरे मन तू याद कर ले, क्यों सहे दुुःख यीशु ने तेरा खानतर जान देकर, दी ररहाई यीशु ने श्राप सारे लेके मेरे, दे दी मुझको आमशषे यीशु के पावन लहू से, भाग्य मेरे खुल गए
To remove all the stains and sin, and to give salvation The Redeemer shed his blood on the cross Bloodthirsty wolves surrounded Jesus He was scourged, nailed, and a stream of blood issued forth from his wounds O my soul, never forget why Jesus suffered! He gave his life to set you free He took all my curses and gave me all the blessings By the holy blood of Jesus, my destiny changed forever
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ESSAY: “The Path from Death to Life” by Kurt Koch, Plough, March 30, 2024: A Catholic cardinal reflects on the dark side and the bright side of Holy Saturday. “As the day Jesus rested in the grave, Holy Saturday is the day of God’s concealment and silence in history,” Koch writes. “And yet, Holy Saturday also has a hopeful and joyful aspect. . . . [On this day] Jesus traveled to [Hades,] the place of greatest loneliness – a place completely bereft of any human relationships – and stirred the souls and limbs trapped by rigor mortis with the warming love of God. He transformed their grave into a place of new life.” This essay is anthologized in the revised and expanded edition of Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Plough, 2026).
Helmut Stephan Diedrich (German, 1937–), Kreuzfall, 1964. Lithograph, edition 62/100.
You fall, sparrow-bone, God-eyed leaf, black hair of ox, kernel of wheat, gold blown from the stalk. You lift wood, trudge, and lurch, your back pulped. You would spit up the cup-dregs for relief—
but no, you want not; you believe your master’s dream. You toss your dreams like chaff to the breeze. You lift wood. You fall,
thin coin,
widow’s all,
copper seed into the mouth of the box. She brushed you a hundred times, so good to hold, but better to drop. Wood weights you, snapped bone, wind-flung leaf. You fall.
This poem was originally published in Christianity and Literature 59, no. 2 (Winter 2010) and is anthologized in Imago Dei: Poems from Christianity and Literature, ed. Jill Peláez Baumgaertner (Abilene Christian University Press, 2012). Used by permission of the poet.
Originating in the Middle Ages, the Stations of the Cross is a Christian devotional practice in which participants commemorate the journey Jesus took down the Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows) to his death—either on location in the Holy Land, physically following a demarcated route, or, more accessibly, in their imaginations, through the aid of images or meditative texts. Traditionally, there are fourteen stations, the third, seventh, and ninth of which are “Jesus falls.” At these stopping places, Christians reflect on the crushing weight of sin and wood, on Jesus’s intensifying exhaustion, and yet, too, on his perseverance to get up each time and, pushing through the debility, to continue his trek to its fatal, foreordained end.
In his poem “Sparrow Lament,” William Woolfitt alludes to Jesus’s three falls on his way to Golgotha: “You fall,” “You fall,” “You fall.” He uses a string of metaphors from the natural world for the falling Christ: He’s a sparrow bone (spat out by a predator?), a floating leaf, a shed bovine hair, a grain of wheat blown loose from its stalk. These are wistful images of solitariness, passage, decease—and yet the descriptor “God-eyed” indicates that the path Christ is on is governed by divine providence.
The sparrow reference, given further weight by its use in the poem’s title, evokes Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 10:28–31: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
The Father has willed the Son to drink the bitter cup of suffering and death, which, despite Jesus’s distressed plea less than twenty-four hours prior that the cup be removed, he downs in trust, casting off any dreams he had for living into old age. As he carries out his calling, he stumbles, he falls to the ground—but not apart from the will of his Father.
In the middle of the poem, the lineation—the arrangement of words using lines and line breaks—mimics a downward motion. Like the drop of the storied widow’s coin into the offering box (Mark 12:41–44; Luke 21:1–4). Most biblical interpreters assume that Mary, Jesus’s mother, was a widow by the time Jesus started his ministry, since Joseph is never mentioned in any of the Gospel accounts after the episode of Jesus disappearing in the temple at age twelve. Woolfitt refers to Jesus as “widow’s all”—Mary’s everything, her firstborn son, whom she sacrificially gives to the world, knowing God will bless her gift. She doesn’t hoard this dear treasure of hers. She surrenders him to God’s greater plan.
It wasn’t an easy choice to make. Mothers instinctively want to hold on to their children, and tight. Many intrusively fear dropping them as infants and would do anything to spare them pain. Well, Mary drops her son, on purpose. She relinquishes him, “copper seed,” whose death bears fruit, yields dividends.
William Woolfitt is a writer across the genres of poetry, fiction, and essay. His poetry collections are The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go (Belle Point, 2024), Spring Up Everlasting (Mercer, 2020), Charles of the Desert (Paraclete, 2016), and Beauty Strip (Texas Review, 2014). He is an associate professor of creative writing at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and two children. He founded and edits Speaking of Marvels, a blog that features interviews with authors of chapbooks, novellas, and books of assorted lengths.
There are hundreds of creative works I could feature on the topic of Christ’s wounds. Here are just a few of note.
ARTICLE: “‘Your body is full of wounds’: references, social contexts and uses of the wounds of Christ in Late Medieval Europe” by Johanna Pollick, Emily Poore, Sophie Sexon, and Sara Stradal: In this three-part collaborative essay, I was most intrigued, in part because of its newness to me, by the first section, “The flowering wound: Christ’s heart in Princeton University, MS Taylor 17,” in which Dr. Johanna Pollick explores a small English illuminated devotional book, dating from around 1500, that portrays Christ’s wounds as wells. For help in interpreting these images, she turns to medieval literary traditions as well as to the Carthusian Miscellany.
Wounded Heart of Christ as the Well of Lyfe, England, ca. 1500. Princeton University Library, MS Taylor 17, fol. 10v.
Dr. Grace Hamman writes about MS Taylor 17’s extraordinary “well of lyfe” page in Jesus through Medieval Eyes (and for InterVarsity’s The Well), which is what brought me to this essay. The hand-colored image shows flowers—labeled “pyte” (pity), “loue” (love), and “charyte” (charity)—springing forth from the wounded heart of Jesus. The verse prayer at the top reads, “Well of lyfe that ever shall laste / My herte in thee make it stedfast.”
The same theme shows up in another late fifteenth-century English lyric in MS Arundel 286 at the British Library, which appears in modern compilations under the title “The Wounds, as Wells of Life” or “The Wells of Jesus’ Wounds”:
Ihesus woundes so wide Ben welles of lif to the goode, Namely the stronde of his syde That ran ful breme on the rode. Yif thee list to drinke To fle fro the fendes of helle, Bowe thu doun to the brinke And mekely taste of the welle.
Jesus’s wounds so wide Are wells of life to the good, Namely the stream from his side That ran fiercely on the rood. If thou list to drink, To flee from the fiends of hell, Bow thou down to the brink And meekly taste of the well.
Trans. Victoria Emily Jones
And in a late fifteenth-century gold ring, also from England, engraved with a Man of Sorrows image and hieroglyphs of Christ’s five wounds, labeled “The well of pitty, the well of merci, the well of confort, the well of gracy, the well of everlastingh lyffe”:
SONG: “Deep Were His Wounds” by William Johnson, 1953: This midcentury hymn is composed of three simple stanzas: The first half of each meditates on Jesus’s cruel death on the cross, whereas each second half (“But . . .”) celebrates the healing, freedom, and eternal life that death wrought.
>> Music by Leland B. Sateren, 1958: I like this tune, called MARLEE, but it’s difficult to sing congregationally. Here’s a soloist, Sarah Gulseth, singing it for her church’s 2011 Good Friday service, accompanied on organ by Luther Gulseth:
>> Music by Vito Aiuto, 2008: I was first introduced to “Deep Were His Wounds” through the Welcome Wagon’s debut album, Welcome to the Welcome Wagon, “a ramshackle singalong enterprise of a Presbyterian pastor (the Rev. Vito Aiuto) and his wife (Monique) wrestling out the influences of folk music, religion, popular culture, and church tradition.” Mood-wise, Aiuto’s tune wouldn’t work as well for Good Friday—even given the paradox of that day, it’s too bright, in my opinion, for that somber observance. But it’s great for throughout the year, especially for churches that favor a contemporary/folksy style of music.
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CANTATA CYCLE:“Membra Jesu Nostri” (The Limbs of Our Suffering Jesus) by Dieterich Buxtehude: Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637–1707) was a Danish German organist and composer of the mid-Baroque period. For Good Friday 1680, he composed a cycle of seven concerto-aria cantatas. The texts of the aria sections are taken from the medieval Latin hymn “Salve mundi salutare” (Hail, the World’s Salvation) by the Cistercian abbot Arnulf of Leuven (ca. 1200–1250), whereas the concerto section texts are Old Testament quotations. The following video is a 2004 performance from Payerne, Switzerland; see the YouTube video description for further credits. The video includes English subtitles, but you can also read the lyrics (with translation) here.
The cycle begins by paying homage to Christ’s wounded feet (“Ad Pedes” = “To the Feet”), and then progresses upward to his knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and finally, face/head. Traditionally, Christ’s wounds are enumerated as five: a hole in each foot, a hole in each hand, and a hole through his side/heart (from the centurion’s spear). But Arnulf meditates on seven distinct body parts of Christ’s that were injured on Good Friday.
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ARTWORKS:
>> The Five Wounds of Christ by Fernand Léger | Commentary by Albert Hengelaar: This visual meditation is about the architecture and interior decoration of the Sacré-Coeur in Audincourt, France, a product of the Art Sacré movement, a Catholic art renaissance spearheaded by the French Dominican Order from 1919 to the 1950s. The centerpiece of the church, sited above the high altar, is a stained glass window depicting the five wounds of Christ shining like suns—one of seventeen windows the artist Fernand Léger designed to encircle the space in a strip.
Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955), The Five Wounds of Christ, 1950–52. Stained glass window, Église du Sacré-Cœur (Church of the Sacred Heart), Audincourt, France.
>> The Great Wound, aka Go On, Wounded Healer by Jack Baumgartner | Commentary by Sam Kee: In this Substack post, Sam Kee unpacks a drawing by his friend Jack Baumgartner [previously], which shows that “there is life in His [Christ’s] wounds, and He pours His life into our wounds.” The drawing started with the roman numeral V, which stands for the five wounds of Christ. The circumference is one large wound that encompasses five smaller wounds, eye-like, each one weeping blood. Other symbols that Kee analyzes in the drawing are wheat, grapes, fig leaves, seashell, fire, heart, and womb. “Go on” is a refrain that Baumgartner uses often in his work, a mantra for persevering in the faith, for continuing on the path.
Jack Baumgartner (American, 1976–), The Great Wound, 2024. Drawing from the series The Diary of a Tree Standing on Its Head.
Kee concludes with an original ekphrastic poem.
You can purchase an archival reproduction of The Great Wound from Baumgartner’s online shop. I encourage you to explore his website as well. I admire how his work is somehow both mystical and earthy, rooted.
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Art & Theology 