Betrayal, torture and execution: few enterprises could end in such ignominy. The sense of failure among the Disciples on that terrible Friday must have been total. One of their number had committed the ultimate duplicity, betraying to the occupying force their teacher and inspiration, the man for whom they had abandoned all else in life. Not only had their movement been crushed, their message rejected; but the man who had represented in his person all the wisdom, humanity and spiritual enlightenment of a God far beyond their comprehension had been crucified as a common criminal.

Whatever the role played by Judas, the papyrus from the Egyptian desert makes no difference to that devastating grief and loss at Golgotha. Whether Jesus went knowingly to His death, having connived in His own martyrdom, as this bizarre “Gospel of Judas” maintains, or whether He had simply accepted the inevitability of betrayal and death, as the New Testament relates, the Crucifixion would seem to mark a spiritual, emotional and physical collapse — the dark night of the soul for those left behind.

But the truth of Christ’s death is the truth of all life on earth: that in the very depths of despair can come relief born of inner spiritual resilience. However adrift the Disciples must have felt, abandoned, ridiculed and disillusioned, they carried in them a message and a conviction that was stronger than anything else on earth — stronger even than death.

That message has been central to Christianity for 2,000 years. It is one that has continually to be reinforced at times of stress, despair and danger, the moments when faith is tested and the will to overcome is undermined. This is why Good Friday is so central in its symbolism: the descent of darkness, the portents of destruction, the expiry of vision and hope. It is the Good Friday that comes to every person at different times, when failure robs life of all meaning, joy and love. It is the collapse of enterprise, confidence, relationships and dignity. It is the descent into Hell.

Christians turn to the Resurrection to sustain them, to the faith of the Disciples that proved stronger than their despair. But turning does not guarantee finding. It is peculiarly difficult in the modern world to hear the voice of inner calm or to find sustenance in a faith that, like a God, seems ever further from relevance and from reach. R. S. Thomas, the Welsh poet and Anglican vicar who died in 2000, described the searching and the waiting for a God who does not show himself, who remains hidden, who does not answer after hours spent kneeling.

Thomas, a poet of the bleakness of a soul hurt by God’s absence, understood that faith does not always provide comfort or immediate answer. But when it comes, it is sudden and overwhelming. “Deliver me from the long drought/ of the mind. Let leaves/ from the deciduous Cross/ fall on us, washing/ us clean, turning out autumn/ to gold by the affluence of their fountain”. It is the comfort, after the failure of Friday, that came to the Disciples on Sunday.