The Day the Rocks Cried Out

As He hung there, His body drooping like a grotesque piñata, His surroundings a carnival of human morbidity, a Dali nightmare landscape;

As humanity poured out all our spite, pain, and ignorance upon Him, and all Jerusalem echoed with our screams of hate and triumph;

The long-suffering earth, silent since the Beginning, could contain its anger no longer.

A deep, rumbling growl began, as of an infinitely huge dog who sees its master threatened; grew louder, began to rise above the screams of the jackals on its surface, became a roar of appalled rage:

NO!!!
BREAK.
CRUSH.
GRIND.
SWALLOW.
MAKE NO MORE.
NO MORE HURT HIM.

And suddenly, the paper-thin skin of dust that is gentle Mother Gaia was trembling, rippling, shrinking away from the raging furnace of the almighty Titan beneath.

The sky above blazed with the lightning swords of the great and terrible Host of Heaven, white-hot with holy wrath, who took up the earth’s cry:

Even so, Lord! You have loved them, and see how they return Your love! Send us forth, let us burn them, purge them, cleanse the earth of this disease called Man, make all pure! These mud-men shall not defile You!

Even the demons, dread spirits of non-being and death, screamed their horror at man’s treatment of the One who offered life:

We knew - You knew! - that it would end like this! But give them to us, let us consume, let us drink them, let them know our horror, to eternally be and yet not be. Let all the universe cease to be, rather than suffer them to wound you! GIVE THEM TO US!!!!!

As all creation raged against blasphemous man, strained against its bonds, prepared to destroy even itself in its fury; as the sky became opaque, angels and devils drew swords, the earth heaved and groaned, and even oblivious Man began to fear oblivion;

A Voice spoke from the cross, and it was the voice of a man, but it was also the Word that had called all things into being, the Word whose speaking makes it so, in a Voice whose quiet authority and utter finality rocked all creation:

Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.

And in the ensuing silence, a trembling universe heard each drop of blood whisper:

I love them.



© John M. Munzer