It's not just Good, it's the Best of Fridays

Photo Credit: www.catholic.org

I never thougtht why today, the commemoration of the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ is called "Good Friday".

According to Catholic Encyclopedia,

"From the earliest times the Christians kept every Friday as a feast day; and the obvious reasons for those usages explain why Easter is the Sunday par excellence, and why the Friday which marks the anniversary of Christ's death came to be called the Great or the Holy or the Good Friday. The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is from "God's Friday" (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English. Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark."

In fact, today is not just a Good Friday but the best of all Fridays.

Today, there is no celebration of the Holy Mass. The anniversary of the institution of the Holy Eucharist was yesterday. It was actually the commemoration of the Last Supper of Christ with his disciples. The washing of the feet of the apostles adds to the drama that had unfolded in history for more than 2,000 years ago when God-made flesh was offered as a "Sacrificial Unblemish Lamb" of God for the expiation of our sins.

Catholics today gazes themselves on the Cross of Christ. No Mass is held. The Altar was stripped off, laid bare. There's nothing to see in the altar. Literally Catholic Churches altar today are empty of anything.

We come to church today at before 3 o'clock to venerate the Cross of which Christ has redeemed the world. The Church made us understand that through our solemn veneration of the Cross and receiving Holy Communion later after the ceremony unites us to Christ our Savior and die from our sins through His death.

Unknown to many Catholics, today, we are about to be redeemed by Christ's redemptive love and so we come to church and thank God it's the best of all Fridays.