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