The Crown of Thorns in the Cosmos

The Crown of Thorns in the Cosmos

 
A new Hubble image of NGC 7049, a glittering "oddball" galaxy captured by NASA/ESA in the constellation of Indus
The halo - the ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy - is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the remarkable swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049's core. Globular clusters are very dense and compact groupings of a few hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity.

An astonishing meditation on Good Friday by  Richard John Neuhaus, "Father Forgive Them"

But it is just as odd that it should be called God’s Friday, when it is the day that we say goodbye to the glory of God. Wherever its name comes from, let your present moment stay with this day; stay a while in the eclipse of the light, stay a while with the conquered One. There is time enough for Easter.

By these three days all the world is called to attention. Everything that is and ever was and ever will be, the macro and the micro, the galaxies beyond number and the microbes beyond notice—everything is mysteriously entangled with what happened, with what happens, in these days. This is the axis mundi, the center upon which the cosmos turns. In the derelict who cries from the cross is, or so Christians say, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. The life of all on this day died. Stay a while with that dying.