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Good Friday, anniversary of Jesus'
death on the cross. According to the Gospels, Jesus was put to
death on the Friday before Easter Day. Since the early church
Good Friday has been observed by fasting and penance. In the
Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican traditions, the
celebration of the Eucharist is suspended; liturgical service
involves veneration of the cross, the Passion narrative from the
Gospel of St. John, and communion using bread and wine
consecrated the previous day, Maundy Thursday. Other forms of
observance include prayer and meditation at the Stations of the
Cross, a succession of 14 images, usually on wooden crosses,
depicting Christ's crucifixion and the events leading up to it.
It's a supreme paradox that we now call the day Jesus was
crucified. Many believe this name simply evolved—as language
does. They point to the earlier designation, God's Friday, as
its root. (This seems a reasonable conjecture, given that
goodbye evolved from God be with you.) Whatever its origin, the
current name of this holy day offers a fitting lesson to those
of us who assume (as is easy to do) that good must mean happy.
We find it hard to imagine a day marked by sadness as a good
day.
Of course, the church has always understood that the day
commemorated on Good Friday was anything but happy. Sadness,
mourning, fasting, and prayer have been its focus since the
early centuries of the church. A fourth-century church manual,
the Apostolic Constitutions, called Good Friday a "day of
mourning, not a day of festive Joy." Ambrose, the
fourth-century archbishop who befriended the notorious sinner
Augustine of Hippo before his conversion, called it the
"day of bitterness on which we fast."
Many Christians have historically kept their churches unlit or
draped in dark cloths. Processions of penitents have walked in
black robes or carried black-robed statues of Christ and the
Virgin Mary. And worshippers have walked the "Stations of
the Cross," praying and singing their way past 14 images
representing Jesus' steps along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha.
Yet, despite—indeed because of—its sadness, Good Friday is
truly good. Its sorrow is a godly sorrow. It is like the sadness
of the Corinthians who wept over the sharp letter from their
dear teacher, Paul, convicted of the sin in their midst. Hearing
of their distress, Paul said, "My joy was greater than
ever." Why? Because such godly sorrow "brings
repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret" (2
Cor. 7:10). I like to think the linguistic accident that made
"God's Friday" into "Good Friday" was no
accident at all. It was God's own doing—a sharp, prophetic jab
at a time and a culture obsessed by happiness. In the midst of
consumerism's Western playground, Good Friday calls to a jarring
halt the sacred "pursuit of happiness." The cross
reveals this pursuit for what it is: a secondary thing.
This commemoration of Christ's death reminds us of the human sin
that caused this death. And we see again that salvation comes
only through godly sorrow—both God's and, in repentance, ours.
To pursue happiness, we must first experience sorrow. He who
goes forth sowing tears returns in joy. At the same time, of
course, Good Friday recalls for us the greatness and wonder of
God's love—that He should submit to death for us. No wonder,
in parts of Europe, the day is called not "Good," but
"Great" or "Holy" Friday.
Today, Christian liturgies reflect the gravity of Christ's act.
Services linger on the details of Christ's death and the extent
of His sacrifice. Often the Stabat Mater is performed—a
thirteenth-century devotional poem remembering Mary's vigil by
the cross. The poem begins "Stabat Mater Dolorosa"—that
is, "a grief-stricken mother was standing."
To commemorate the Lord's hours on the cross, many Protestants
hold their Good Friday services between noon and 3. They
reflect, in a series of readings and songs, on Christ's seven
last words. (1: "Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do." 2: "Today shalt thou be with me in
paradise." 3: "Woman, behold thy son!" 4:
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 5:
"I thirst." 6: "It is finished." 7:
"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.") This
form originated with seventeenth-century Peruvian Jesuits, one
of many cases in which modern Protestants have picked up
Catholic devotional practices.
In the Catholic Good Friday Mass, the altar is stripped of all
adornments, and worshipers venerate the cross by kissing a
crucifix. In the "Ceremony of the Winding Sheet,"
Greek Catholics carry a cloth depicting Jesus' dead body in
procession to a shrine, where the priest places it in a symbolic
tomb.
Some Western churches still celebrate a medieval liturgy called
the Tenebrae, or Service of Darkness, in which candles and
lights are gradually extinguished until the congregation sits in
complete darkness—a representation of the darkness that
covered the earth at the death of Jesus (Mark 15:33). Scripture
readings and hymns lead the worshipers in a communal repentance
for the sins that made the Crucifixion necessary.
The Tenebrae service ends with the strepitus, a loud, harsh
noise such as the slamming of a book or crashing of a cymbal.
This echoes several scriptural sounds: the final cries of Jesus,
the earthquake at his death (Matt. 27:46-53), the shutting of
His tomb, and the second earthquake at His rising (Matt. 28:2).
We do not need to be as notorious in our sinning as Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900) to remember our own darkness, as he did, on Good
Friday. Wilde's 1881 poem "E Tenebris," titled after
the Tenebrae, reflects his own long, conflicted entrance into
Christianity that would culminate in a deathbed conversion. In
the poem, he appeals for mercy: Come down, O Christ, and help
me! reach thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than
Simon on thy lake of Galilee: The wine of life is spilt upon the
sand, My heart is as some famine-murdered land Whence all good
things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in Hell
must lie If I this night before God's throne should stand. 'He
sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, Like Baal, when his
prophets howled that name From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten
height.' Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night, The feet
of brass, the robe more white than flame, The wounded hands, the
weary human face.
Good Friday has always challenged merely human goodness. Its sad
commemoration reminds us that in the face of sin, our goodness
avails nothing. Only One is good enough to save us. That he did
so is cause indeed for celebration.
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