Many people in different countries celebrate the anniversary of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, and death on the Friday before Easter Sunday. This is an observance that involves people fasting and praying. Many church services are held in the afternoon, usually around noon or midday to 3pm, to remember the hours when Jesus hung on the cross. Many churches also observe the day by re-enacting the procession of the cross as in the ritual of the Stations of the Cross, which depicts the final hours of Jesus’ life.
Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus. It is the most solemn day in the Christian calendar. The dates of Good Friday, which vary each year, occur between March 20th and April 23rd. It falls on the last Friday before Easter. It is the pinnacle of the Holy Week. All Christians observe this day with great humility and reverence. It is this spirit of humility and reverence that is reflected in each of the Good Friday Power points, which can be used as a preaching aid on Good Friday.
Must Read : What is Holy Week? The Days of Holy Week
As early as the first century, the Church set aside every Friday as a special day of prayer and fasting. It was not until the fourth century, however, that the Church began observing the Friday before Easter as the day associated with the crucifixion of Christ. First called Holy or Great Friday by the Greek Church, the name “Good Friday” was adopted by the Roman Church around the sixth or seventh century. This collection of Good Friday videos reflect the types of traditions associated with the history of Good Friday.
The Christian faith, like most religious systems, observes many holy days throughout the year. One that is very important, but not always discussed, is Good Friday. In this lesson we’ll talk about the beliefs and traditions surrounding this Christian holiday.
Good Friday
What is the most important holiday in Christian traditions? A lot of people may say Christmas, on which Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, but actually that’s not it. The most important Christian holiday is actually Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Christ, the miracle upon which the Christian faith was founded. However, Easter is not an isolated event. Most Christian churches celebrate various moments leading up to Easter as well.
Now, Christians celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. That means the date of Easter, and its preceding events, change every year, but not in relation to each other. One of the most important of the preceding events is Good Friday, the day on which Christ was crucified, celebrated the Friday before Easter Sunday. Why do Christians call such a dark day ‘Good’? To understand that, we’re going to have to talk a little theology.
The Crucifixion of Christ
The Christian faith is based around the story of Christ’s crucifixion, which occurs in a series of stages. We start on the Wednesday before Easter, called Holy Wednesday. According to the Christian scriptures, Christ’s disciple named Judas Iscariot agreed to betray Jesus Christ and turn him over to the Jewish High Priests for a reward. On the next day, called Maundy Thursday, Christ and the disciples gathered together to celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover. After this meal, generally referred to as the Last Supper, Judas betrayed Christ, who was arrested.
That brings us to Good Friday. This day commemorates the day after the Last Supper. According to the Christian Gospels, Jesus was sent before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. Pilate found no reason to punish Jesus, and told the Jewish priests to punish him by Jewish laws. The priests insisted that Jesus had broken Roman law, so Pilate went to King Herod of the Hebrew people. Herod too sent Jesus back to Pilate, who (literally) washed his hands of the affair and gave in to the demands of the Jewish priests to execute Jesus.
According to Roman custom, Jesus was beaten and crucified, which was a form of both torture and execution meant to instill fear in any who would oppose Roman rule. To mock Jesus for his reputation as a revolutionary leader of the Jews, Roman soldiers made him a crown of thorns and crucified him under a sign reading ‘Jesus of Nazarene, King of the Jews’. At the end of that day, the Christian Gospels say darkness fell over the entire land and Jesus Christ died.
Myth of Good Friday
There are many theories as to why the day that remembers Jesus’ death on the cross is known as Good Friday. One school of thought is that Good Friday stems from the words “God’s Friday”, while others understand “good” in the sense of “observed as holy”. According to yet another interpretation, despite the horrors Jesus endured on that day, the event ultimately represents an act of love and constitutes one of the central and most cherished themes of Christianity: that Jesus died to pay the price for humankind’s sins. Many Orthodox Christians call the day Great Friday. The day is also known as Black Friday or Sorrowful Friday, as well as Long Friday.
The Good Friday date is one of the oldest Christian holidays, with some sources saying that it has been observed since 100 CE. It was associated with fasting during the early years of its observance and was associated with the crucifixion around the fourth century CE. The Easter date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox.
According to the Bible, the son of God was flogged, ordered to carry the cross on which he would be crucified and then put to death. It’s difficult to see what is “good” about it.
Some sources suggest that the day is “good” in that it is holy, or that the phrase is a corruption of “God’s Friday”.
However, according to Fiona MacPherson, senior editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, the adjective traditionally “designates a day on (or sometimes a season in) which religious observance is held”. The OED states that “good” in this context refers to “a day or season observed as holy by the church”, hence the greeting “good tide” at Christmas or on Shrove Tuesday. In addition to Good Friday, there is also a less well-known Good Wednesday, namely the Wednesday before Easter.
The earliest known use of “guode friday” is found in The South English Legendary, a text from around 1290, according to the dictionary. According to the Baltimore Catechism – the standard US Catholic school text from 1885 to the 1960s, Good Friday is good because Christ “showed His great love for man, and purchased for him every blessing”.
What is Good about Good Friday?
According to Chris Armstrong in Christianity Today:
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”.
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).
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.
