Saturday

Good Friday

H Agia kai h Megalh Paraskeuh (The Holy and Big Friday) is, with the birth and resurrection of Christ, celebrated as one of most important days in the Christian calendar, primarily in the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Episcopal and other liturgical churches. As the day of Christ's suffering and death on the cross it is a somber and most melancholy day, for it is the day foreordained by God that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son would die a horrendous death in the stead of man, at once demonstrating the "love" and "justice/wrath" of God at the "place of the skull." Heaven and earth would collide, and the relationship between God and man would be restored by our wondrous Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

For nearly 2,000 years, theologians and lay people have contemplated this most magnific of all meditations, yet there is no exhausting or expending the universe of ideas associated with "Good Friday." The occasion which took place on that one single day so long ago will forever exhilirate and inspire the spiritual man to reflect on the person of the mighty God who worked nothing but extraordinary wonders on that "Holy Friday."

I have provided some links below for your perusal (very beneficial in understanding liturgical worship). The first link is an article from the Greek Orthodox Church while the second link bears the stamp of the Byzantine Catholic Rite (Eastern Catholics). While reading the words of the liturgy, imagine hymnic melodies which impart the ominous dirges of the Eastern Orthodox or Medieval Church. Thus, by reading the words and imaginatively pairing them with Byzantine hymnic motifs, you can get an idea just how "immense" and "weighty" such liturgical worship might sound.

  • Great Friday - Article

  • Vespers for Holy and Great Friday
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