Good Friday is celebrated on the Friday before Easter and commemorates the end of Jesus’ life and the events that immediately preceded it.
This most solemn day is called good, a word that means holy.
Catholics spend the day meditating on Jesus’ Passion and Death, venerating the Cross, and praying for the salvation of the world.
The Lord’s Passion is celebrated in the afternoon which includes reading accounts of the events from Sacred Scripture.
Because Jesus died and was placed in the tomb on this day, it is the only day of the year when Mass is not celebrated. Holy Communion is distributed from the Eucharist consecrated the day before.
As a day of penance, abstaining from meat and fasting are required by the Church on Good Friday.
A day of fasting and prayer:
Remembering the God who died for us:
It was now about Noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”; and when He had said this he breathed his last. The centurion who witnessed what had happened glorified God and said, “This Man was innocent beyond doubt.” When all the people who had gathered for this spectacle saw what had happened, they returned home beating their breasts; but all his acquaintances stood at a distance, including the women who had followed him from Galilee and saw these events.
Luke 23: 44-49
The Church dares to call this day good:
Our own sins are part of the story:
Recognizing what Jesus did on the Cross:
God loved us all along:
“God so loved the world that He gave his only Son.” For the salvation of the world, the eternal Son of God, Who in the womb of the Virgin Mary assumed our human nature by the power of the Holy Spirit, became “obedient to the Father unto death, even the death of the Cross”. Every day the Church ponders the supreme mystery of the saving Incarnation and the redeeming death of the Son of God, sacrificed for us on the Cross. On this day, Good Friday, we pause to contemplate this mystery with still greater intensity. In the darkness of the late evening, we have come here, to the Colosseum, to follow once again, in the devotion of the Way of the Cross, the steps of Christ’s journey of suffering, leading to the tragic climax of his death.
Pope John Paul II, Via Crucis, April 10, 1998
The Cross is how God wins back souls:
The link between pain and sin:
The Cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the “one Mediator between God and men”. But because in his incarnate divine person He has in some way united himself to every man, “the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” is offered to all men. He calls his disciples to “take up [their] cross and follow [Him]”, for “Christ also suffered for [us], leaving [us] an example so that [we] should follow in his steps.” In fact Jesus desires to associate with his redeeming sacrifice those who were to be its first beneficiaries. This is achieved supremely in the case of his mother, who was associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of his redemptive suffering.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 618
A sign of hope and conversion:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
A Byzantine Catholic Good Friday:
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