Good Friday
Good Friday, called Feria VI in Parasceve in the Roman Missal, he
hagia kai megale paraskeue (the Holy and Great Friday) in the
Greek Liturgy, Holy Friday in Romance Languages, Charfreitag
(Sorrowful Friday) in German, is the English designation of Friday
in Holy Week, that is, the Friday on which the Church keeps the
anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Parasceve, the
Latin equivalent of paraskeue preparation (i.e. the preparation
that was made on the sixth day for the Sabbath; see Mark, xv, 42)
came by metonymy to signify the day on which the preparation was
made; but while the Greeks retained this use of the word as
applied to every Friday, the Latins confined its application to
one Friday. Irenaeus and Tertullian speak of Good Friday as the
day of the Pasch; but later writers distinguish between the Pascha
staurosimon (the passage to death), and the Pascha anastasimon
(the passage to life i.e. the Resurrection). At present the word
Pasch is used exclusively in the latter sense. The two Paschs are
the oldest feasts in the calendar. From the earliest times the
Christians kept every Friday as a feast day; and the obvious
reasons for those usages explain why Easter is the Sunday par
excellence, and why the Friday which marks the anniversary of
Christ's death came to be called the Great or the Holy or the Good
Friday. The origin of the term Good is not clear. Some say it is
from "God's Friday" (Gottes Freitag); others maintain that it is
from the German Gute Freitag, and not specially English.
Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-
Saxons; so today in Denmark.
There is, perhaps, no office in the whole liturgy so peculiar, so
interesting, so composite, so dramatic as the office and
ceremonial of Good Friday. About the vigil office, which in early
times commenced at midnight in the Roman, and at 3 a.m. in the
Gallican Church, it will suffice to remark that, for 400 years
past, it has been anticipated by five or six hours, but retains
those peculiar features of mourning which mark the evening offices
of the preceding and following day, all three being known as the
Tenebrae (q. v.) The morning office is in three distinct parts.
The first part consists of three lessons from Sacred Scripture (
two chants and a prayer being interposed ) which are followed by a
long series of prayers for various intentions; the second part
includes the ceremony of unveiling and adoring the Cross,
accompanied by the chanting of the Improperia; the third part is
known as the Mass of the Presanctified, which is preceded by a
procession and followed by vespers. Each of these parts will be
briefly noticed here. The Hour of None being finished, the
celebrant and ministers, clothed in black vestments, come to the
altar and prostrate themselves for a short time in prayer. In the
meantime, the acolytes spread a single cloth on the denuded altar.
No lights are used. When the celebrant and ministers ascend the
altar, a lector takes his place on the epistle side, and reads a
lesson from Osee, vi. This is followed by a tract sung by the
choir. Next comes a prayer sung by the celebrant, which is
followed by another lesson from Exodus, xii, chanted by the
subdeacon. This is followed by another tract (Ps. cxxxix), at the
close of which the third lesson, viz. the Passion according to St.
John, is sung by the deacons or recited from a bare pulpit --
"dicitur passio super nudum pulpitum". When this is finished, the
celebrant sings a long series of prayers for different intentions,
viz. for the church, pope, bishop of the diocese, for the
different orders in the Church, for the Roman Emperor (now omitted
outside the dominions of Austria), for catechumens .... The above
order of lessons, chants, and prayers for Good Friday is found in
our earliest Roman Ordines, dating from about A. D. 800. It
represents, according to Duchesne (234), "the exact order of the
ancient Synaxes without a liturgy", i.e. the order of the earliest
Christian prayer meetings, at which, however, the liturgy proper,
i. e. the Mass, was not celebrated. This kind of meeting for
worship was derived from the Jewish Synagogue service, and
consisted of lessons, chants, and prayers. In the course of time,
as early perhaps as A. D. 150 (see Cabrol's "Origines Liturgiques"
137), the celebration of the Eucharist was combined with this
purely euchological service to form one solemn act of Christian
worship, which came to be called the Mass. It is to be noted that
the Mass is still in two parts, the first consisting of lessons,
chants, and prayers,. and the second being the celebration of the
Eucharist (including the Offertory, Canon, and Communion). While
the Judica, introit, and the Gloria in Excelsis have been added to
this first part of the Mass and the long series of prayers omitted
from it, the oldest order of the Synaxis, or meeting without Mass,
has been retained in the Good Friday service. The form of the
prayers deserves to be noticed. Each prayer in three parts.
� The celebrant invites the congregation to pray for a specified
intention.
� The deacon then says "Let us kneel" (Flectamus genua); then the
people were supposed to pray for a time kneeling in silence, but
at present immediately after the invitation to kneel the subdeacon
invites them to stand up (Levate).
� The celebrant collects, as it were, all their prayers, and
voices them aloud.
The modern collect is the representative of this old solemn form
of prayer. The first part is reduced to the Oremus, the second
part has disappeared, and the third part remains in its entirety
and has come to be called the collect. It is curious to note in
these very old Good Friday prayers that the second part is omitted
in the prayers for the Jews, owing, it is said, to their having
insulted Christ by bending the knee in mockery before Him. These
prayers were not peculiar to Good Friday in the early ages (they
were said on Spy Wednesday as late as the eighth century); their
retention here, it is thought, was inspired by the idea that the
Church should pray for all classes of men on the day that Christ
died for all. Duchesne (172) is of opinion that the Oremus now
said in every Mass before the Offertory, which is not a prayer,
remains to show where this old series of prayers was once said in
all Masses.
The dramatic unveiling and adoration of the Cross, which was
introduced into the Latin Liturgy in the seventh or eighth
century, had its origin in the Church of Jerusalem. The
"Peregrinatio Sylviae" (the real name is Etheria) contains a
description of the ceremony as it took place in Jerusalem towards
the close of the fourth century. "Then a chair is placed for the
Bishop in Golgotha behind the Cross... a table covered with a
linen cloth is placed before him; the Deacons stand around the
table, and a silver-gilt casket is brought in which is the wood of
the holy Cross. The casket is opened and (the wood) is taken out,
and both the wood of the Cross and the Title are placed upon the
table. Now, when it has been put upon the table, the Bishop, as he
sits, holds the extremities of the sacred wood firmly in his
hands, while the Deacons who stand around guard it. It is guarded
thus because the custom is that the people, both faithful and
catechumens, come one by one and, bowing down at the table, kiss
the sacred wood and pass on" (Duchesne, tr. McClure, 564). Our
present ceremony is an obvious development of this, the manner of
worshipping the true Cross on Good Friday observed at Jerusalem. A
veiled image of the Crucifix is gradually exposed to view, while
the celebrant, accompanied by his assistants, sings three times
the "Ecce lignum Crucis", etc. (Behold the wood of the Cross on
which hung the salvation of the world), to which the choir
answers, each time, "Venite adoremus" (Come let us adore). During
the singing of this response the whole assembly (except the
celebrant) kneel in adoration. When the Cross is completely
unveiled the celebrant carries it to the foot of the altar, and
places it in a cushion prepared for it. He then takes off his
shoes and approaches the Cross (genuflecting three times on the
way) and kisses it. The deacon and subdeacon also divest
themselves of their shoes (the deacon and subdeacon may take off
their shoes, if that be the custom of the place, S.C.R., n. 2769,
ad X, q. 5), and act in like manner. For an account of the
peculiarly impressive ceremony known as the "Creeping to the
Cross", which was once observed in England, see article Cross
(vol. IV, p. 537). The clergy two and two follow, while one or two
priests vested in surplice and black stole take crosses and
present them to the faithful present to be kissed. During this
ceremony the choir sings what are called Improperia, the Trisagion
( in Greek as well as Latin ), if time permits the hymn Crux
fidelis ...(Oh, Cross, our hope...). The Improperia are a series
of reproaches supposed to be addressed by Christ to the Jews. They
are not found in the old Roman Ordines. Duchesne (249) detects, he
thinks, a Gallican ring in them; while Martene (III, 136) has
found some of them alternating with the Trisagion in nineth
century Gallican documents. They appear in a Roman Ordo, for the
first time, in the fourteenth century, but the retention of the
Tresagion in Greek goes to show that it had found a place in the
Roman Good Friday service before the Photian schism (ninth
century). A non-Catholic may say that this is all very dramatic
and interesting, but allege a grave deordination in the act of
adoration of the Cross on bended knees. Is not adoration due to
God alone? The answer may be found in our smallest catechism. The
act in question is not intended as an expression of absolute
supreme worship (latreia) which, of course, is due to God alone.
The essential note of the ceremony is reverence (proskynesis)
which has a relative character, and which may be best explained in
the words of the Pseudo-Alcuin: " Prosternimur corpore ante
crucem, mente ante Dominium. Veneramur crucem, per quam redempti
sumus, et illum deprecamur, qui redemit" (While we bend down in
body before the cross we bend down in spirit before God. While we
reverence the cross as the instrument of our redemption, we pray
to Him who redeemed us). It may be urged: why sing "Behold the
wood of the Cross", in unveiling the image of the Cross? The
reason is obvious. The ceremony originally had immediate connexion
with the True Cross, which was found by St. Helena in Jerusalem
about the year A. D. 326. Churches which procured a relic of the
True Cross might imitate this ceremony to the letter, but other
churches had to be with an image which in this particular ceremony
represents the wood of the True Cross.
As might be expected, the ceremony of the unveiling and adoration
of the Cross gave rise to peculiar usages in particular Churches.
After describing the adoration and kissing of the Cross in the
Anglo-Saxon Church, Rock (The Church of Our Fathers, IV, 103) goes
on to say: "Though not insisted on for general observance, there
was a rubric that allowed a rite, at this part of he office, to be
followed, which may be called The Burial of the Rood. At the hind
part of the altar ... there was made a kind of sepulchre, hung all
about with a curtain . Inside this recess...the cross, after the
ceremony of kissing it had been done, was carried by its two
deacons, who had, however, first wrapped it up in a linen cloth or
winding-sheet. As they bore their burden along, they sang certain
anthems till they reached this spot, and there they left the
cross; and it lay thus entombed till Easter morn, watched all that
while by two, three, or more monks, who chanted psalms through day
and night. When the Burial was completed the deacon and subdeacon
came from the sacristy with the reserved host. Then followed The
Mass of the Pre-sanctified. A somewhat similar ceremony (called
the Apokathelosis) is still observed in the Greek Church. An image
of Christ, laid on a bier, is carried through the streets with a
kind of funeral pomp, and is offered to those present to be
worshipped and kissed. To return to the Roman Rite, when the
ceremony of adoring and kissing the Cross is concluded, the Cross
is placed aloft on the altar between lighted candles, a procession
is formed which proceeds to the chapel of repose, where the second
sacred host consecrated in yesterday's Mass has since lain
entombed in a gorgeously decorated urn and surrounded by lights
and flowers. This urn represents the sepulchre of Christ (decree
of S.C.R., n. 3933, ad I). The Most Holy Sacrament is now carried
back to the altar in solemn procession, during which is sung the
hymn "Vexilla Regis prodeunt" (The standards of the King advance).
Arrived in the sanctuary the clergy go to their places retaining
lighted candles, while the celebrant and his ministers ascend the
altar and celebrate what is called the Mass of the Presanctified.
This is not a Mass in the strict sense of the word, as there is no
consecration of the sacred species. The host which was consecrated
in yesterday's Mass (hence the word presanctified) is placed on
the altar, incenced, elevated ("that it may be seen by the
people"), and consumed by the celebrant. It is substantially the
Communion part of the Mass, beginning with the "Pater noster"
which marks the end of the Canon. From the very earliest times it
was the custom not to celebrate the Mass proper on Good Friday.
Speaking about this ceremony Duchesne (249) says, " It is merely
the Communion separated from the liturgical celebration of the
Eucharist properly so called. The details of the ceremony are not
found earlier than in books of the eighth or ninth century, but
the service must belong to a much earlier period. At the time when
synaxes without liturgy were frequent, the 'Mass of the
Presanctified' must have been frequent also. In the Greek Church
it was celebrated every day in Lent except on Saturdays and
Sundays, but in Latin Church it was confined to Good Friday ". At
present the celebrant alone communicates, but it appears from the
old Roman Ordines that formerly all present communicated (Martene,
III, 367). The omission of the Mass proper marks in the mind of
the Church the deep sorrow with which she keeps the anniversary of
the Sacrifice of Calvary. Good Friday is a feast of grief. A black
fast, black vestments, a denuded altar, the slow and solemn
chanting of the sufferings of Christ, prayers for all those for
whom He died, the unveiling and reverencing of the Crucifix, these
take the place of the usual festal liturgy; while the lights in
the chapel of repose and the Mass of the Presanctified is followed
by the recital of vespers, and the removal of the linen cloth from
the altar ("Vespers are recited without chant and the altar is
denuded").
The rubrics of the Roman Missal prescribe no further ceremonial
for this day, but there are laudable customs in different churches
which are allowed. For example, the custom (where it exists) of
carrying in procession a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows is
expressly permitted by decrees of the S. Con. of Rites (n. 2375,
and n. 2682); also the custom (where it exists ) of exposing a
relic of the Holy Cross on the high altar (n. 2887), and the
custom of carrying such a relic in procession within the walls of
the church, not, however, during the usual ceremonies (n. 3466),
are expressly permitted. Rock (op. cit. 279, 280) notes, with
interesting detail, a custom followed at one time in England of
submitting voluntarily to the rod of penace on Good Friday.
T.P. GILMARTIN
Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas
In memory of Mr. Cherian Poovathumkal
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.
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