[KIM] LAWTON: In the Hispanic Catholic tradition, Good Friday is especially important, and so many Latino churches actually begin their Friday observances on Thursday. At San Antonio’s historic San Fernando Cathedral, after the Holy Thursday service the crowd spills out into the courtyard for a re-enactment of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and then his arrest.
[The] Rev. [DAVID] GARCIA: The last image is a difficult image. Jesus is manhandled. Jesus is tied up. Jesus is dragged off. So you go home with this very deep sense of sorrow and reflection and suffering that is now going to be a very much a part of Good Friday.
LAWTON: On Good Friday, Latino churches typically hold a variety of services all day and into the evening. Many of those observances are held outside and in the streets. Passion plays which retell the story of the crucifixion are especially popular. San Fernando has held a Good Friday passion play for more than 275 years. Today, some 25,000 people show up for it. There are more re-enactments, telling the familiar story: Jesus standing before the Roman governor Pilate being tried, mocked, and beaten, and finally convicted.
I remember a story of a Rector who, upon noting the large attendance on Easter Sunday as compared to the poor attendance on Good Friday, bluntly told them that if they hadn’t been through Good Friday they had no business being in Church on Easter. Maybe not the best way to win friends and influence people. But as the story goes Good Friday attendance was up dramatically the next year.
As part of my Lenten discipline I take Good Friday off and try to more deliberately reflect on the events of the day. I try to do Stations of the Cross, attend the noon day services, watch The Passion†and go to the evening Good Friday service. I also make an extra effort to observe Holy Saturday to reflect on Christ in the tomb and what it must have been like for Jesus followers on that day—a day without hope.
A description of American Christians I heard once was that we “skip merrily from Palm Sunday to Easter without much thought that something may have happened in between.” We Lutherans would call that cheap grace, I suppose. It is sad but much more accurate than I wish it was.
I wonder whether the practice of observing the day jointly as Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion, increasingly common in Lutheran churches and of course an ancient practice to some extent, actually functions to decrease worship attendance during Holy Week. If you’ve already spend 2/3 of Palm Sunday worship hearing the Passion story and a sermon thereon, wouldn’t many people use that as an excuse not to return on Friday?
When I came to the US, I think the thing that most shocked me was the way Good Friday was treated as an ordinary business day. In other countries I had lived, Protestant and Catholic alike, it was a national holiday. In some it was treated as a national day of mourning (solemn music on the wireless etc.). The Good Friday services, Episcopal and Catholic, I have attended in major US cities have been well attended. Suburban churches almost empty.
If past years are anything to go by, the central London church where I am pastor will be full at 3 pm on Good Friday, yea, even unto the gallery thereof. And there will have been a family service at 11 am. What strikes me on this occasion is the devotion to Christ, rather like the Hispanic services mentioned. Here in the UK it is almost impossible for ordinary believers to show themselves deeply moved by faith. As Tony Blair said, people think you are a crackpot. Good Friday is one of the few occasions when the man and woman in the pew can show emotion as they remember the sufferings of Christ. As a priest and pastor I am always left feeling unworthy. We clergy have so many opportunities to grow in holiness, and seem instead to stall. On a Good Friday we look at our people coming forward to venerate the cross, and we know that in the pressures, conflicts and sometimes even tragedies of their lives, they have kept the faith. God bless them. On the issue of churches not being well attended, I wonder if it is partly a question of resources. To do a Good Friday liturgy well requires quite a lot by way of back-up.
Our community has a Good Friday Stations of the Cross that processes up the main thoroughfare in this part of town, about 2 miles, I’d guess, ending at my parish. Unfortunately, it’s in Spanish, so I can’t really participate. Our diocese, led by the bishop, also holds a prayer vigil outside the local abortion clinic on Friday afternoon.
My favorite thing to do on Good Friday is go sit in the Cathedral downtown, an old stone church which has retained it’s pre-Vatican II flavor. With the Sacrament and oils gone, and the sanctuary stripped, you can feel the emptyness in a way that highlights Jesus dying for me. Sometimes I do Stations privately in there, sometimes I just sit.