April 3, 2015, Prescott-  In this evening’s episode of “Hawai’i Five-O”, the great Chi McBride took up the questions of both marital and fraternal fidelity.  His character, a captain on a Hawai’i State Police task force, finds himself facing the possibility that a close friend is being duplicitous, while re-affirming his own love for his wife.  The heartbreak he faces, in the first instance, makes him hauntingly vulnerable and very much in need of the second.

All my thirty years of closeness to Penny, and the years of unity with her spirit that have ensued, I have kept a fidelity, a loyalty of purpose.   I have female friends, now, whom I adore as people, and as helpers in many aspects of my life.  The time could yet come when I am in a friendship that turns romantic, but that’ll happen if it is meant to be.  My soulmate remains watchful, I know.

Today, millions of people around the world observe, commemorate and mourn the result of duplicity.  1, 982 years ago, money trumped loyalty to the Light of the World. At the same time, fear clouded the judgment of the man who would be the first Pope, and led to abandonment, however temporary.

The Paragon of Fidelity forgave His tormentors, His killers and His duplicitous friends.  Jesus the Christ set the example, to remain steadfast in the face of its opposite behaviour.  How many were the false ones who called “Lord, Lord”, in His wake, yet walked the dark path!  How many the devoted ones who gave their all for Him, Whom they loved completely!

Fidelity and duplicity are choices we each make, in matters great and small, and in all relationships, both secular and divine, both committed and casual.  Which shall be the goal, as this Good Friday draws to a close?