When the Candles Flicker Out

a Good Friday meditation

Dear Friends,

It is Good Friday.

Holy Week, and the Triduum especially, remind me of my mother. Five years have passed since the Easter Sunday when she passed from death to life, and still I feel tender, even fragile, in these days of Holy Week, my emotions close to the surface, a myriad of griefs weighing on my heart and mind.

A year after she died, I wrote the following reflection. Reading it again this week helped me remember the truth I stand on, the truth I stake my life on: that the Lord is my Shepherd who leads me, guides me, sustains me, protects me, and ushers me through every valley of shadow. I pray that on this Good Friday, in whatever valley of shadow you find yourself, you too would know the nearness and presence of the Lord.

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Holy Week, and my mother was dying. On Holy Saturday night, we knew the end was near, so we lit hundreds of candles and placed them around her garden, even floating them in bowls in the swimming pool. Then we kept vigil. I read the Easter Vigil prayers. We watched the candles flickering in the darkness.

As the night wore on, the kids slipped quietly into the house to go to bed. Around midnight, my husband and brother-in-law followed them. Eventually my dad retired, too. It was just my sister, our mom, and I, outside in the night.

My mom’s breathing was slow, just a handful of breaths each minute. My sister and I held her hands and wrapped blankets around her shoulders, her legs, her feet. We draped ourselves in blankets, too, and laughed and cried and remember-whenned.

One by one the candles flickered out.

My sister went inside to make tea. I stayed with my mom. It was very quiet. Even the frogs in the canal and the crickets had fallen silent. The candles had all guttered out, and the stars seemed dim and very far away. For days I’d had the sense that God was near, was holding me, but now I felt alone and afraid. “Oh God,” I cried in my heart, too scared to even give voice to my words. “Oh God, where are You?”

I heard no answer.

The only sound was my mother’s occasional labored breath.

As I huddled in my chair, the refrain of a worship song I barely knew came to my mind: “You are here. You are holy. We are standing in your glory.” Over and over those words sang themselves in me. Eventually I began to quietly sing them aloud. It felt like a herculean act of faith that I did not have to sing them in the face of darkness and death. It felt like it was so not-enough.

It was only later that I realized those words were God’s answer to my question, and I now count that moment as one of my most precious memories, not just of that night, but of any night. For it speaks to me of both cross and resurrection. On the cross Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, where are You? Why have you left me alone?” We do not know what answer He received, or if He even received an answer. We only hear that cry of dereliction echoing down the centuries in the heart of every person who has suffered and been unable to sense God’s presence in their suffering, right down to the moment I cried out those same words to God in the silence of my heart as my mother lay dying in the darkness.

And in that dark before dawn on Easter morning, God placed a song in my heart, reminding me that even in the valley of shadow, He was present. And wherever He was, was glory. My memories of that night are shot through with radiance. I remember the dark and the cold and the quiet. I remember the tears and that moment of feeling alone and abandoned. But what I remember more is the light. There was no physical light that night, but I see now that God was there, and His presence transfigures everything. The darkness is not dark to Him, and when He is with us, our darkness turns to light. We may only see the light in retrospect. We may never see it at all in this life. But the dawn of Easter morning is a promise that light dispels darkness, that life triumphs over death. And the radiance of that dawn casts its bright shadow over all that came before and all that is still to come, transfiguring everything in the glory of the risen Christ.

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Meanwhile, it is Good Friday. We are descending with Jesus into the cold, quiet darkness of the grave. Grief attends our way, and glory seems a long way off. I understand. I feel it, too, the weight of my frailty, the fragility of my faith. And so I remember, and remind you:

God is here.

God is holy.

We are standing in His glory.

We may not sense His presence. We may feel oppressed by a sense of His absence. But how we feel doesn’t change reality. He is with us. Always. Everywhere. The promise of the cross is that He is with us in our suffering, and the promise of resurrection is that He will not leave us there, that even the darkest nights will shine with the light of His glory. They already do. We just can’t see it yet.

And so I pray this Triduum that our loving Lord will increase our faith, that in these dark days, He will open our eyes to the radiance of His presence, right here, right now.

With hope,
K. C.

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Photo of candles in the darkness by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash