Good Friday Liturgy: Daughters of Jerusalem

BBC Radio 4 presents: Good Friday Liturgy: Daughters of Jerusalem. The words of Carol Ann Duffy tell the story of the crucifixion from the perspective of the women who witnessed Christ's Passion. The music is striking. The narrative is told as if Mary Magdalene follows the passion sequence of events including the trial when she hears from Pilate's wife (whom she knows personally) her advice to her husband. An interlude with Veronica recalls the words of the Sermon on the Mount.

Incidentally, if you don't know the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, winner of the T.S. Eliot prize for poetry in 2006, here's her poem, Prayer:

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer -