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 this second day of the sacred Paschal Triduum 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:
After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.” There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, He said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, He handed over the spirit.
John 19: 28-30
Our own sins are part of the story:
Remembering the God who died for us:
The Church dares to call this day good:
God loved us all along:
God placed on Jesus’ Cross all the weight of our sins, all the injustices perpetrated by every Cain against his brother, all the bitterness of the betrayal by Judas and by Peter, all the vanity of tyrants, all the arrogance of false friends. It was a heavy Cross, like night experienced by abandoned people, heavy like the death of loved ones, heavy because it carries all the ugliness of evil. However, the Cross is also glorious like the dawn after a long night, for it represents all the love of God, which is greater than our iniquities and our betrayals. In the Cross we see the monstrosity of man, when he allows evil to guide him; but we also see the immensity of the mercy of God, who does not treat us according to our sins but according to his mercy.
Pope Francis, Via Crucis, 18 April 2014
Recognizing what Jesus did on the Cross:
The Cross is how God wins back souls:
The link between pain and sin:
The redemption won by Christ consists in this, that He came “to give his life as a ransom for many”, that is, He “loved [his own] to the end”, so that they might be “ransomed from the futile ways inherited from [their] fathers”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 622
Where Jesus died and was buried:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Leading as a Catholic:
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