Good Friday by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
 
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
 
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
 
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon –
I, only I.
 
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Corinna Laughlin commentary: 
 
Christina Rossetti was born in London in 1830 and died in 1894.  She was from a remarkably talented family. Her siblings all did remarkable things – her brother Dante Gabriel was a renowned poet and painter; her sister wrote a book on Dante; her brother William a noted critic and editor. Through her brothers, she was closely linked with the PreRaphaelite movement, and she appears as the Virgin Mary in Dante Rossetti’s famous Annunciation, and as St. Elizabeth of Hungary in a painting by James Collinson, to whom she was briefly engaged.
 
Rossetti had a happy childhood, but in her teenage years she experienced the first of several serious bouts with depression, something she would struggle with all her life. Her Christian faith was at the center of her life and of her writing.
 
In her poem “Good Friday,” Rossetti asks herself a question. “Am I a stone,” she asks, that she can stand beneath the cross and yet not weep? She draws on details from the Gospel accounts of Christ’s Passion and notes that everyone reacted to Christ’s suffering—the women wept; Peter wept; the good thief was moved; even the sun and moon “hid their faces in a starless sky” in eclipse. She feels like she’s the only one who can’t seem to feel anything.  Why can’t she feel?
 
Rossetti isn’t just beating herself up here. She’s giving an accurate description of “acedia,” a spiritual torpor or apathy which we all experience sometimes. Rossetti responds in a healthy way to acedia: she acknowledges it and she prays about it. At the end of the poem, she addresses Christ, saying, “Greater than Moses, turn and look once more / And smite a rock.” Just as Moses, at God’s command, struck the rock so that water flowed out for the Israelites to drink, Rossetti prays that Christ will break her open, so that she can feel with him and for him in his Passion.
 
This year, as we celebrate Holy Week under unprecedented circumstances, let’s not beat ourselves up if we find it hard to feel through our distraction, busyness, or anxiety. Instead, let’s pray with Rossetti for the grace to be broken open, to see and to feel with Christ during these Holy Days. Have a blessed Holy Week.