Holy Friday, also known as Good Friday, Black Friday,
Great Friday, is a holy day observed by Christians commemorating the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. This day is commemorated
during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter
Sunday, and often coincides with the Jewish observance of Passover.
On Great and Holy Friday, the Orthodox Church
commemorates the sufferings of Christ: The mockery, the crown of thorns, the
scourging, the nails, the thirst, the vinegar and gall, the cry of desolation,
and all the Savior endured on the Cross. “Today He Who hung the earth on the
waters is hung on the tree.”
This truly holy Day is one …of solemn observation and
strict fasting. “We worship Your passion and Your burial, for by them, You have
saved us from death!”
In the afternoon, around 3 pm, all gather for the
Vespers of the Taking-Down from the Cross, commemorating the Deposition from
the Cross. The Gospel reading is a concatenation taken from all four of the
Gospels. During the service, the body of Christ (the soma) is removed from the
cross, as the words in the Gospel reading mention Joseph of Arimathea, wrapped
in a linen shroud, and taken to the altar in the sanctuary.
Near the end of the service an epitaphios or “winding
sheet” (a cloth embroidered with the image of Christ prepared for burial) is
carried in procession to a low table in the nave which represents the Tomb of
Christ; it is decorated with many flowers.
The epitaphios itself represents the body of Jesus wrapped in a burial shroud, and is a roughly full-size cloth icon of the body of Christ. Then the priest may deliver a homily and everyone comes forward to venerate the epitaphios. In the Slavic practice, at the end of Vespers, Compline is immediately served, featuring a special Canon of the Crucifixion of our Lord and the Lamentation of the Most Holy Theotokos by Symeon the Logothete.
Before the service begins, a “tomb” is erected in the
middle of the church building and is decorated with flowers. Also a special
icon which is painted on cloth (in Greek, epitaphios; in Slavonic,
plaschanitsa) depicting the dead Saviour is placed on the altar table. In
English this icon is often called the winding-sheet.
Vespers begin as usual with hymns about the suffering
and death of Christ. After the entrance with the Gospel Book and the singing of
Gladsome Light, selections from Exodus, Job, and Isaiah 52 are read. An epistle
reading from First Corinthians (1:18-31) is added, and the Gospel is read once
more with selections from each of the four accounts of Christ’s crucifixion and
burial. The prokeimena and alleluia verses are psalm lines, heard often already
in the Good Friday services, prophetic in their meaning:
They divided my garments among them and for my raiment
they cast lots (Psalm 22:18).
My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me (Ps 22:1).
Thou hast put me in the depths of the Pit, in the
regions dark and deep (Ps 88:6).
After more hymns glorifying the death of Christ, while
the choir sings the dismissal song of St Simeon, the priest vests fully in his
dark-colored robes and incenses the winding-sheet which still lies upon the
altar table. Then, after the Our Father, while the people sing the troparion of
the day, the priest circles the altar table with the winding-sheet carried
above his head and places it into the tomb for veneration by the faithful.
The noble Joseph, when he had taken down Thy most pure
body from the Tree, wrapped it in fine linen and anointed it with spices, and
placed it in a new tomb (Troparion of Holy Saturday).
Based on Christian scriptural details of the Sanhedrin
Trial of Jesus, the Crucifixion of Jesus was most probably on a Friday (John
19:42). The estimated year of Good Friday is AD 33.
CONVERSATION