What Actually Happens on Good Friday—And Why It’s So Powerful (Fr Cristino)

What actually happens on Good Friday—and why is it so different from every other day of the year?

In this powerful Good Friday reflection, Fr. Cristino walks us through the most solemn liturgy in the Church. Why is there no Mass? Why does the priest lie prostrate before the altar? What does it mean to venerate the Cross when the tabernacle stands empty?

From the silence and sorrow to the beauty of the Solemn Intercessions and the adoration of Christ’s crucified body, this episode explores the heart of Good Friday and why the Church calls it “good.”

If you’ve ever wondered why Good Friday feels so unlike anything else—this is the episode for you. 

Transcript

Father Cristino welcome back Thank you to the last video of our Lenten series with you on the most solemn day of the year Good Friday Many of us will have the experience of going to church on Good Friday and we'll experience something unique Can you speak to the liturgy of Good Friday and what is distinct from this as opposed to a typical Sunday or mass right Yeah it's important to clarify that we actually have a particular name of what happens on Good Friday It is called the commemoration of the Lord's passion So some people call it Good Friday Mass Uh but that's actually uh a misnomer because the mass is not celebrated on Good Friday It is the only day of the entire year on which a mass is not celebrated because mass is actually a shortened version of the technical title of what we refer to our Sunday worship to be which is the holy sacrifice of the mass And what we are doing during mass is representing Christ's sacrifice on the cross to the father as his perfect act of worship So we say that Jesus most perfectly worshiped the father in his humanity when he sacrificed himself on the cross And by so doing brought to fulfillment or completion all of the sacrifices of the past covenants that God had had with his people making now a new and everlasting covenant which is what he called it at the last supper in his body and blood And so every mass we celebrate is a representation of that one everlasting sacrifice That's why we refer to the mass as the sacrifice of the mass So if the bread and wine are not consecrated then whatever that is even if it is an act of worship on our parts because there's many ways we can worship God it's not the sacrifice of the mass because it is the specific act of the consecration of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ that constitutes that sacrifice And so that is the one day of the year this day Good Friday that the mass is not celebrated So if the mass is not celebrated what else is unique about today like there's the I there's because the consecration is a integral part but if I remember as we go in there's other things that are different isn't there well I I can if you'd like I'll just walk us through the liturgy Uh it's it is one of the most poignant and powerful liturgical actions of the entire liturgical year Uh it's it's sandwiched in between Holy Thursday and the Easter Vigil And so remember that that these three days are actually referred to as the triduum which in Latin just means three days And the liturgy is considered one continuous act of worship So from the beginning of the mass of the Lord's supper on the night of Holy Thursday until the conclusion of the mass of the Easter Vigil we say that it is one liturgy punctuated over those three days And so at the end of Holy Thursday mass there's no dismissal or final blessing We carry the blessed sacrament to a separate place for private adoration that we refer to as the altar of repose and after that everyone just leaves Uh it is it just specifically says that the congregation is to disperse in silence and so there is no closing hymn as we're used to at Sunday mass There's no go in peace There's nothing we just all kind of go our separate ways And in in a in a way it's meant to simulate the experience of the apostles at the end of the last supper they go off into the garden with our Lord and then he's taken from them Uh and so uh one of the the powerful moments in for me in holy Thursday at at midnight to go and take from the tabernacle at the altar of a pose the blessed sacrament that has been consecrated and bring our Lord in the Eucharist to a separate and and private place where there is not public adoration taking place And it's sort of like that experience of Jesus being taken away from them after he was arrested So then when we return on Good Friday for the commemoration of the Lord's passion we enter into a liturgy that right away you can tell is different because when you walk into the church you will see everything is stripped bare There are no candles on the altar no altar cloth there's not a flower there's nothing Everything and and usually we veil the images in our churches And so everything is veiled and and nothing is seen There is no beauty to behold as it says in the book of the prophet Isaiah Everything is is very spartan And then the priest enters in silence Everyone is asked to rise When they rise he enters in silence There's no singing And when he gets to the front of the church he actually prostrates himself on the floor And so the priest will get down on his knees everyone else will kneel and then he will lay flat on his face on the floor in front of the altar as a gesture of his own uniting himself to the sacrifice of Christ that that he has completely laid himself out just like Jesus laid down his life that day which is what we are commemorating And after that moment of silence he rises goes to his chair and just simply says "Let us pray." and he prays uh the opening collect of that liturgy and then everyone is seated in silence and we proceed with the liturgy of the word and that structure is a typical first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah then the responsorial psalm from Psalm 51 the second reading I believe it's from St Paul's letter to the Philippians Uh and then the passion of the the Lord according to the gospel of John and it is always John's passion that is read on Good Friday This is when we have that sort of familiar experience of multiple people reading multiple parts So that someone is a narrator someone reads the other people's parts and someone reads our Lord's parts It's usually the priest who reads the parts of our Lord And then after the conclusion of that we have a homaly like usual but then we move into another portion of the liturgy that is again distinct On Sundays we're used to this moment that we call the universal prayer or more commonly it's known as the prayers of the faithful where some petitions are read out and we say Lord hear our prayer Lord hear our prayer But on Good Friday we have something referred to as the solemn intercessions And they're actually meant to be chanted And there is two parts There is the intention for which we are praying And then there is a a summarizing of that prayer intention that is led by the priest And in between the two we go through this kind of cumbersome and awkward exercise of standing and kneeling 10 times And so the deacon is supposed to say at the conclusion of reading the petition "Let us kneel." And then everyone kneels down And the whole point of that moment is unlike we we never do this any other time of the year we say what we're praying for And there are 10 specific things We pray for the universal church I'll see if I can remember them off the top of my head We pray for the universal church We pray for the holy father We pray for the local bishop and all of the clergy We pray for our catechumans and those who are about to be received into the church through baptism We pray for the Jewish people specifically We pray for all believers but who do not believe in Jesus We pray for all people of goodwill in general We pray for civic authorities and government officials And we pray for all who are uh sick or suffering Yeah I missed one somewhere in the middle there But in between each of the times that the deacon announces the petition and the priest prays the little collect we kneel because we're we're being asked to actually pray for that So we kneel in silence and in our own hearts we try and add to that petition individually asking the Lord to hear our prayer for each of these specific and important things And then we stand and the priest says the closing prayer of that petition Then we move on to the next one This is a pretty lengthy exercise Lots of up and down It's supposed to be uncomfortable It's supposed to be awkward It's supposed to feel laborious because on Good Friday we're trying to really work We're trying to enter into the mystery of the Lord's passion After we have had the solemn intercessions we move into the third part of that liturgy which is known as the adoration of the cross And so it is at this time that processed forward is a veiled either bare wooden cross or traditionally was actually a crucifix that had a corpus the body of our lord on it I think in many places especially bigger churches we've become uh very pragmatic and so we bring in these big gigantic crosses so that when people come to venerate it they can be coming from all different directions and have somewhere on there that they can touch and you can get through a large crowd because Good Friday still somehow seems to attract one of the largest crowds of the year Something about that day just makes people feel like they need to go to church right and it's very fitting that they would And so as the cross is processed forward in three different instances it's unveiled and we say behold the wood of the cross on which hung the salvation of the world And then after the cross has been brought forward uh the priest it is stipulated that he is to go back to his chair remove his vestment and his shoes It says he's to take off his shoes as well and to go down and then venerate the cross And usually on Good Friday unlike every other day of the year the cross is meant to be venerated with a genuflection So in the same gesture that we reserve only to the blessed sacrament we bend our right knee towards the cross as that reminder to us that this isn't just two pieces of wood nailed together This is the means by which our Lord has saved the world And so we genuflect to the cross in the absence of the blessed sacrament because remember our tabernacles are empty right the blessed sacrament has been removed Jesus has been taken away from us And so we genuflect to his cross as this sort of this broken expression of of saying where is he's gone All we have left is his cross this means of of our salvation And then one by one people come forward uh to venerate the cross Um oh it's a very emotional thing to think about because as a priest when you know the the lives and the suffering and the struggle of your people and one by one you see them come and touch the cross or kiss the cross or some people cling to the cross and you know what they're bringing to Jesus in that moment and you see how they're trying to unite their suffering with Jesus's suffering It's a very powerful moment to to just watch that unfold and to know that for for these people in that moment that might be the the closest they ever get to trying to make sense of their suffering that this is somehow a way that is leading them closer to Jesus in his suffering on that day in particular And so once that has concluded and everyone has had their uh their opportunity to venerate the cross we then move into the fourth part of that liturgy which is the distribution of holy communion And so this is why on the night before at Holy Thursday we've consecrated such an abundance of hosts uh that are distributed to the people during that mass But then we need all of those extra because no hosts will be consecrated on Good Friday because the sacrifice of the mass isn't celebrated And so you then distribute the hosts that were consecrated from the day before So it's done very simply Uh the blessed sacrament we are told is to be brought out by a priest carrying uh the blessed sacrament wrapped in a veil accompanied by candles A plain cloth is opened up on the altar and the candles are set down on the altar The blessed sacrament is set on that cloth We pray the hour father and then we show the host to the people and say like usual behold the lamb of god The priest consumes that host Everyone there is has the holy communion distributed to them And then after everyone has received the blessed sacrament is taken away again and not put back in the central tabernacle but brought to the place where it has been reserved in private uh and at the conclusion of that there is something called the prayer over the people and then again we just disperse in silence The priest is instructed that he is to go and again genuflect towards the cross that has been put out for public veneration and then he leaves No singing no final blessing no dismissal you just go And again it's a very uh stark feeling a stark moment where it just feels incomplete And in a way it's it's helpful to think that's how they must have felt as they walked away from the cross that day How could this have happened what what just happened and our Lord has has is taken away off of the cross dead laid in a tomb And so we're supposed to leave with a kind of sense of of confusion and and and disarray and not knowing even what to do with ourselves I try to have the the custom where it's possible on Good Friday that I leave and it's the only time of the year that I do this I just I leave I don't greet uh my parishioners Uh I I want everyone to just feel like it's time to go right and and be quiet and everyone just go to their homes in their separate ways So that is a very there's elements of it that obviously are familiar Yes But everything about Good Friday just stands apart in the way that we try to offer our worship that day Wow Thank you for your beautiful detailed explanation of what people can expect coming up today Um and you know I think we'll we'll wrap it up with that And I just want to turn to you and just say you know um share with us once you go to Good Friday service share with us below what stood out to you this time when going uh to Good Friday going to church Good Friday and what stood out to you in this video as well This will be our last video uh in the Lenten series So uh I think our next one will be a week maybe next Wednesday or the following We want to thank you for journeying with us uh during this time and Father Christine thank you for your time with us as well Thank you Ken I hope your family has a blessed Easter Thank you Thank you very much And we will end with a prayer

Oh my Jesus oh highest good I repent of having so lightly esteemed your grace that I have bartered it away for mere nothing When will it be oh Lord that I shall see you face to face and shall embrace you without the fear of ever having to lose you aid me with your grace This I hope for through your merits More and more increase in me your love and the desire to please you Amen