All night had shout of men, and cry
Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky
On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.

Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
But Life again, but Victory,
Were hushed within the dead of night,
The shutter’d dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone,
He rose again behind the stone.

–Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

There's a rumour, a whisper. Something's happening. Could it be? #HolySaturday @gandkchurch @cofe pic.twitter.com/4xJz6oTEpv

— Fr Craig Huxley-Jones SCP (@FatherHux) April 15, 2017

This ultimate solidarity is the final point and the goal of that first ‘descent,’ so clearly described in the Scriptures, into a ‘lower world’ which, with Augustine, can already be characterised, by way of contrast with heaven, as infernum. Thomas Aquinas will echo Augustine here. For him, the necessity whereby Christ had to go down to Hades lies not in some insufficiency of the suffering endured on the Cross but in the fact that Christ has assumed all the defectus of sinners…Now the penalty which the sin of man brought on was not only the death of the body. It was also a penalty affected the soul, for sinning was also the soul’s work, and the soul paid the price in being deprived of the vision of God. As yet unexpiated, it followed that all human beings who lived before the coming of Christ, even the holy ancestors, descended into the infernum. And so, in order to assume the entire penalty imposed upon sinners, Christ willed not only to die, but to go down, in his soul, ad infernum. As early as the Fathers of the second century, this act of sharing constituted the term and aim of the Incarnation. The ‘terrors of death’ into which Jesus himself falls are only dispelled when the Father raises him again…He insists on his own grounding principle, namely, that only what has been endured is healed and saved.

That the Redeemer is solidarity with the dead, or, better, with this death which makes of the dead, for the first time, dead human beings in all reality- this is the final consequence of the redemptive mission he has received from the Father. His being with the dead is an existence at the utmost pitch of obedience, and because the One thus obedient is the dead Christ, it constitutes the ‘obedience of a corpse’ (the phrase is Francis of Assisi’s) of a theologically unique kind. By it Christ takes the existential measure of everything that is sheerly contrary to God, of the entire object of the divine eschatological judgment, which here is grasped in that event in which it is ‘cast down’ (hormemati blethesetai, Apocalypse 18, 21; John 12; Matthew 22, 13). But at the same time, this happening gives the measure of the Father’s mission in all its amplitude: the ‘exploration’ of Hell is an event of the (economic) Trinity…This vision of chaos by the God-man has become for us the condition of our vision of Divinity. His exploration of the ultimate depths has transformed what was a prison into a way.

––Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter [emphasis mine]

#HolySaturday “The Church is still in silence, the tabernacle is empty. Yet this is a day of the most radiant expectation – – we are in the presence of something greater than we can see.” Sr. Wendy Beckett. Jesus♥️Caritas pic.twitter.com/8UevSQ0Ckw

— Barry Naylor ن (@KaJuror) April 20, 2019

HOW life and death in Thee
Agree !
Thou hadst a virgin womb
And tomb.
A Joseph did betroth
Them both.

–Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)

Pietro Lorenzetti
(c.1280-c.1348)
Entombment
c.1320
Fresco
Lower Church,S.Francesco
Assisi#HolySaturday #HolyWeek#DonneInArte #ArtLovers pic.twitter.com/D2qtUwoQ3d

— Alessandra Ciccolini (@AlessandraCicc6) April 14, 2017

In this empty hallway, there’s nothing expected of us at this moment. The work is out of our hands, and all we can do is wait, breathe, look around. People sometimes feel like this when they’ve been up all night with someone who’s seriously ill or dying, or when they’ve been through a non-stop series of enormously demanding tasks. A sort of peace, but more a sort of ‘limbo’, an in-between moment. For now, nothing more to do; tired, empty, slightly numbed, we rest for a bit, knowing that what matters is now happening somewhere else.

–Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

Burial of Christ by Carl Bloch (1834-1890) pic.twitter.com/lbjnI6ZZW9

— Eleutherius✝️🦬🇩🇪 (@Eleutherius23) April 8, 2023

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who as on this day didst rest in the sepulchre, and didst thereby sanctify the grave to be a bed of hope to thy people: Make us so to abound in sorrow for our sins, which were the cause of thy passion, that when our bodies rest in the dust, our souls may live with thee; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

#theartnotes

Francisco Goya was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and throughout his long career was a commentator and chronicler of his era.

The Burial of Christ, 1772 pic.twitter.com/5fghIluzCL

— The Art Notes. (@theartnotes) December 30, 2019

“By the grace of God” Jesus tasted death “for every one”. In his plan of salvation, God ordained that his Son should not only “die for our sins” but should also “taste death”, experience the condition of death, the separation of his soul from his body, between the time he expired on the cross and the time he was raised from the dead. The state of the dead Christ is the mystery of the tomb and the descent into hell. It is the mystery of Holy Saturday, when Christ, lying in the tomb, reveals God’s great sabbath rest after the fulfillment of man’s salvation, which brings peace to the whole universe.

–The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, para. 624

Holy Saturday is the ultimate time of waiting and lamenting. It’s easy to look back when you know what comes next, but Holy Saturday asks us to enter a death that seems final; without hope and without future. For the disciples, it’s the day that all stopped: when the future was… pic.twitter.com/hQK7GYAIf6

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) March 30, 2024

In the midst of life we are in death.

We grow and wither as quickly as flowers;

we disappear like shadows.

To whom can we go for help, but to you, Lord God,

though you are rightly displeased because of our sins?

And yet, Lord God Almighty,

most holy and most merciful Saviour,

deliver us from the bitterness of eternal death.

You know the secrets of our hearts;

mercifully hear us, most worthy judge eternal;

keep us, at our last hour,

in the consolation of your love.

[You, O Lord, are gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and rich in love.

As kind as a father is to his children,

so kind is the Lord to those who honour him.

For you know what we are made of;

you remember that we are dust.

As for us, our life is like grass.

We grow and flourish like a wildflower;

then the wind blows on it, and it is gone

no-one sees it again.

But for those who honour the Lord, his love lasts forever,

and his goodness endures for all generations.]

Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), The Corpse of Christ, c. 1582
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart pic.twitter.com/lzREHchK5B

— Marzena (@Marzena99557145) March 29, 2024

I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been, if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you, you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

No one wants to grieve. But today is important – God understands and grieves with us. Our Blessed Mother knows the sword pierced through the soul. And because God's sacrifice breaks apart death, we have hope in grief. May Good Friday be a reminder of God's profound love for us. pic.twitter.com/6rFXD43k9n

— Cathedral of Christ the King, Atlanta (@CathedralCTK) March 29, 2024

Grant, Lord,
that we who are baptized into the death
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
may continually put to death our evil desires
and be buried with him;
and that through the grave and gate of death
we may pass to our joyful resurrection;
through his merits,
who died and was buried and rose again for us,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

As the Easter Triduum continues, here's the very touching Virgin and Saint John Mourning over the Body of Christ, fragment of a Lamentation of Christ, Master of Delft, c. 1500 – c. 1510. (Rijksmuseum) #GoodFriday pic.twitter.com/isAbUi0F9j

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) March 29, 2024

Read it all.

Good Friday commemorated across the world – in pictures#Religion #Christianity #Catholicism #GoodFriday #AroundTheWorld #InPictures #photography #Photos
https://t.co/CdugfdS4y1

— Richard Norman Poet (@ElmerPalaceSE25) March 29, 2024

Grant, O Lord, unto us, and to all thy servants, the grace of perseverance unto the end; in the power of him who for the finishing of thy work laid down his life, even thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Buen día!

"La crucifixión" 1597
-El Greco
Óleo sobre lienzo
312×169 cm
Representados la Virgen, Juan y María Magdalena.
Al pie de la Cruz, tres ángeles recogen la sangre de Cristo.
Visión nocturna del Calvario con carácter eucarístico.#Madrid Museo del Prado
Click👇 pic.twitter.com/NwwuLmIKEb

— Miguel Calabria (@MiguelCalabria3) March 29, 2024

..[Jesus of Nazareth] was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be “like God”–he was God.

Now, this is not just a pious commonplace: it is not a commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

—Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,1949), page 4 (with special thanks to blog reader and friend WW)

The Crucifixion and Deposition of Christ #GoodFriday
Bamberg State Library Msc.Lit. 1; Sacramentary; early 11th century; Fulda; ff.61v, 68v pic.twitter.com/wl69sE0cUx

— Ennius (@red_loeb) March 29, 2024

Listen to it all.

O God, the Father of mankind, who didst suffer thine only Son to be set forth as a spectacle despised, derided, and scornfully arrayed, yet in his humiliation to reveal his majesty: Draw us, we beseech thee, both to behold the Man and to worship the King, immortal, eternal, world without end.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

Ilustración del Evangeliario Rabbula, año 586, siríaco. La primera representación de Cristo en la cruz en un manuscrito iluminado. pic.twitter.com/Y1EqtN0Mwh

— Ruta por el Medievo (@RMedievo) March 29, 2024

Lyrics:

O sacred Head, now wounded
With grief and shame weighed down
Now scornfully surrounded
With thorns, Thine only crown
How pale thou art with anguish
With sore abuse and scorn
How does that visage languish
Which once was bright as morn
What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered
T’was all for sinners’ gain
Mine, mine was the transgression
But Thine the deadly pain
Lo, here I fall, my Savior
‘Tis I deserve Thy place
Look on me with Thy favor
Vouchsafe to me Thy grace
What language shall I borrow
To thank Thee, dearest friend
For this Thy dying sorrow
Thy pity without end
O make me Thine forever
And should I fainting be
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee

This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?

Read it all.

Mikhail Nesterov – Crucifixion, 1908 pic.twitter.com/9WOnc8qcBW

— Fr. David Abernethy ☦️ (@philokalia_min) June 25, 2021

Almighty God, who of thy great love for man didst, as at this time, give thy dearly beloved Son to die for us upon the cross: Grant us a living faith in our Redeemer, and a thankful remembrance of his death. Help us to love him better for his exceeding love to us; and grant that our sins may be put away, and nailed to the cross, and buried in his grave, that they may be remembered no more against us; through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You, because by Your holy cross, You have redeemed the world. #GoodFriday ✝️ pic.twitter.com/A8dHlyDNap

— Marlene T. Diaz (@academicknight) March 29, 2024

“When God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man’s godforsakenness. In Jesus he does not die the natural death of a finite being, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross, the death of complete abandonment by God. The suffering in the passion of Jesus is abandonment, rejection by God, his Father. God does not become a religion, so that man participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him.”

–Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), p, 414

"So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha. There they crucified him…" (Jn 19:17-18)

Christ Carrying the Cross by El Greco. pic.twitter.com/kRaQQ0t2lZ

— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) May 20, 2020

Alone thou goest forth, O Lord, in sacrifice to die;
is this thy sorrow nought to us who pass unheeding by?

Our sins, not thine, thou bearest, Lord; make us thy sorrow feel,
till through our pity and our shame love answers love’s appeal.

This is earth’s darkest hour, but thou dost light and life restore;
then let all praise be given thee who livest evermore.

Grant us with thee to suffer pain that, as we share this hour,
thy cross may bring us to thy joy and resurrection power [The Hymnal 1982 #164].

Albrecht Durer: Crucifixion (Woodcut), 1511 pic.twitter.com/26cqOCmzpL

— Gerard Gleeson (@gerardAgleeson) April 10, 2020

Almighty Father,
look with mercy on this your family
for which our Lord Jesus Christ was content to be betrayed
and given up into the hands of sinners
and to suffer death upon the cross;
who is alive and glorified with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Crucifixion with portraits of Henry (Henricus dux) and Matilda (Matilti ducissa). #GoodFriday
BL Lansdowne MS 381/1; 'Psalter of Henry the Lion'; between 1168-1189 CE; Germany,NW; f.10v @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/BrS6aK1sne

— Ennius (@red_loeb) March 29, 2024

Isn’t it curious that the Son of God would die in this particular way? Even Paul was permitted a nice, neat slice of the sword. Why did the Son of God die in the worst possible way? That’s the point here. Crucifixion was specifically designed to be the worst of the worst. It was so bad, good Roman citizens didn’t discuss it in public. It’s very much like the way we avoid talking about death and sin. The Romans avoided talking about crucifixion because it was so horrible, so disgusting, so obscene””they used that word to describe it.

Why this method and not another? Because it corresponds to the depth of depravity caused by human rebellion against God. It shows us just how bad things really are with us. No wonder we don’t want to look at it. Yet again, the African American church has never been afraid to look at it. It gives them hope. It gives them strength. It gives them comfort.
As for the blood: It is important because it’s mentioned so much in Scripture. It’s a synecdoche, a word that stands for the whole thing. When you say “the blood of Christ,” you mean his self-offering, his death, the horror of it, the pouring out of it. It sums up the whole thing.

And it’s not just a metaphor; he really did shed blood when he was scourged. He was a bloody mess. I remember one line from an article by a secular journalist. Concerning the crucifixion of Jesus, he wrote, “He must have been ghastly to behold.” That’s a great sentence.

—Fleming Rutledge in a recent Christianity Today interview (emphasis mine)

Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary, St John and St Mary Magdalene is a painting by Anthony van Dyck. He produced it in 1617-19 as the high altarpiece for the Jesuit church in Bergues near Dunkirk, during his time as an assistant to Peter Paul Rubens. It is now in the Louvre. pic.twitter.com/WuK808ICbP

— EUROPEAN ART (@EuropeanArtHIST) October 5, 2018

O Lord Jesu Christ, take us to thyself; draw us with cords to the foot of thy cross: for we have no strength to come, and we know not the way. Thou art mighty to save, and none can separate us from thy love. Bring us home to thyself, for we are gone astray. We have wandered; do thou seek us. Under the shadow of thy cross let us live all the rest of our lives, and there we shall be safe.

The Crucifixion #GoodFriday
BL Egerton 1139; The 'Melisende Psalter'; 12th century (between 1131 CE & 1143 CE); Eastern Mediterranean (Jerusalem); f.8r @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/sGrHoDqOc0

— Ennius (@red_loeb) March 29, 2024

I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away,
and broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead of long ago.

He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has put heavy chains on me;
though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
he has blocked my ways with hewn stones,
he has made my paths crooked.

Lamentations 3:1-9

Good Friday- Christ with the instruments of the Passion. Horae c.1517 [LPL MS3561 f.78v.] pic.twitter.com/EPwdgeBSfm

— LambethPalaceLibrary (@lampallib) March 25, 2016

Il Guercino's dramatic "Capturing Christ" (1621) @FitzMuseum_UK #art #twitart #Baroque pic.twitter.com/8LoBr5ptCs

— Paul Wadey (@pwadey) October 26, 2016

St. Peter once: ‘Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?’-
Much more I say: Lord, dost Thou stand and knock
At my closed heart more rugged than a rock,
Bolted and barred, for Thy soft touch unmeet,
Nor garnished nor in any wise made sweet?
Owls roost within and dancing satyrs mock.
Lord, I have heard the crowing of the cock
And have not wept: ah, Lord, thou knowest it.
Yet still I hear Thee knocking, still I hear:
‘Open to Me, look on Me eye to eye,
That I may wring thy heart and make it whole;
And teach thee love because I hold thee dear
And sup with thee in gladness soul with soul
And sup with thee in glory by and by.’

–Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Portrait of a bearded man as an Apostle (Saint Peter) Pier Francesco Mola. @zigut @sofia_pinzi @45lefia @silvia_nader pic.twitter.com/Hi41L2vdNX

— 🎨 Bel Art – Orlando Fernández — 🎨🎼 (@ofervi) February 9, 2014

The Kiss of Judas. Christ is betrayed, and arrested. Painted panel wood, probably from an East Anglian rood screen, of c1470 now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. On the right, Peter draws his sword to cut off the high priest's servant's ear. pic.twitter.com/a3q7A3KRbm

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) March 28, 2024

From Rod Whitacre here:

In the story of the footwashing, then, we have the most profound revelation of the heart of God apart from the crucifixion itself. We also learn more of the relation between Jesus and his disciples, the relation of the disciples with one another in humble service and the mission of the disciples to the world. These themes are similar to those of the Eucharist developed earlier (see comments on 6:52-59). The community that Jesus has been forming here takes more definite shape, revealing more clearly “the law of its being” (Bultmann 1971:479), which is humble, self-sacrificing love.

Christ Reasoning with Peter, by Giotto di Bondone (Cappella Scrovegni a Padova). pic.twitter.com/IsN1TNxHzO

— 🌿_ (@rebeca6169) April 1, 2021

As is our custom, we aim to let go of the cares and concerns of this world until Monday and to focus on the great, awesome, solemn and holy events of the next three days. I would ask people to concentrate their comments on the personal, devotional, and theological aspects of these days which will be our focal point here. Many thanks–KSH.

'Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.'
Psalm 90: 1- 2 pic.twitter.com/oH6DISOdry

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) March 27, 2024

O Christ, the true vine and the source of life, ever giving thyself that the world may live; who also hast taught us that those who would follow thee must be ready to lose their lives for thy sake: Grant us so to receive within our souls the power of thine eternal sacrifice, that in sharing thy cup we may share thy glory, and at the last be made perfect in thy love.

—The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: Services of Praise and Prayer for Occasional Use in Churches (New York: Oxford University Press, 1933)

"[Our Lord] got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him" (John 13:4–5)#maundythursday #africanart pic.twitter.com/CJMLvDQrTn

— EthiopicManuscriptArt (@ArtEthiopic) March 28, 2024