GOOD FRIDAY

April 2, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, New Jersey

The archetypal symbol of Christian faith is the cross. Apart from its historical role as the instrument of the Lord’s execution and death, some commentators see its intersection of vertical and horizontal beams as a visual symbol of incarnation. The vertical beam symbolizes transcendence. It points to heaven above, and to eternity. The horizontal beam symbolizes immanence. It points to the world around us, the here and the now. So the cross’s intersection of vertical and horizontal signifies by itself the union of transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, spirit and matter, divine and human, in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. 

At the historical level, Jesus’ death on an actual wooden cross on the hill of Golgotha also exhibits both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. Along the vertical axis, the Lord is offering up to his Father in heaven the one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; and the Father is looking down from heaven and lovingly accepting his Son’s sacrifice. Along the horizontal axis, the dying Lord is stretching out his arms of love to gather in all for whose salvation he’s offering himself; and conversely his life, forgiveness, grace, and strength are flowing out from his stretched-out arms to the world’s remotest ends.

This ancient Good Friday liturgy exhibits a fourfold structure, which oscillates between these vertical and horizontal dimensions. Alternately, our attention is drawn upwards, vertically, to Jesus lifted high on the cross. Then, our attention is redirected outwards, horizontally, to the world he died to save. And so the pattern repeats itself.

We begin with the Liturgy of the Word, culminating in the Passion according to Saint John. Its purpose is to focus our attention vertically on Jesus and what he actually did on Good Friday. In some churches, the Passion is read dramatically, with readers taking the various spoken parts. Done well—and from what I’ve seen so far, it’s done very well here at St. Uriel's—that kind of reading can be effective and moving. In parishes that have the resources to do so, the Passion is sung to the ancient chants, with the cantors and choir taking the various parts. Either way, the goal is a performative recitation, aiming not merely to remember something that happened in the past, but to make it vivid and real, to transport us back, so that we become virtual eyewitnesses; or, conversely, to bring it forward into the present so that we experience it in the here and now in all its naked terror and awe.

Then, following a sermon or homily, which is ideally kept brief, we turn outward from the cross horizontally towards the world, reciting the series of ancient prayers known as the Solemn Collects. This movement has a deep inner logic. It’s not simply that since we really have nothing to say, we may as well just say some prayers. No, having just listened to the Passion Gospel, we ask God to apply the benefits of his Son’s death “to all people everywhere, according to their needs.” We make these prayers in the assurance that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” The Church’s liturgical response to the proclamation of the Lord’s death is thus to pray for all those for whom he died.

Continuing our alternation between the vertical and the horizontal dimensions, we turn our attention once again vertically to the cross, this time in love and adoration. A crucifix is brought in for the congregation’s veneration. The rubrics specify that this cross must be made of wood, like the cross on which Jesus was crucified. This ceremony dates back (at least) to the fourth-century Church in Jerusalem, where worshippers at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher would line up for hours on Good Friday to kiss a large fragment of the true Cross that would be unveiled and exposed for that purpose. In the current pandemic, we must temporarily forego the practice of each person having the opportunity to venerate individually, but still, we can all do so collectively, from a distance.

Following the Liturgy of the Word, the Solemn Collects, and the Veneration of the Cross, comes the fourth part of the liturgy, the Mass of the Presanctified. We retrieve from the Altar of Repose the Blessed Sacrament reserved at last night’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper. In many churches, the Sacrament is reserved one kind only, the sacred hosts but not the wine, to emphasize that today’s liturgy is not another Mass, not a fresh offering of the Holy Eucharist, but Communion from the Reserved Sacrament—an extension of the single extended Triduum liturgy that began last night.

The Church’s sacramental theology teaches us that we receive the grace of Holy Communion just as fully in one kind as in both kinds. But still, Communion in one kind does diminish the symbolism. The English Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols writes: “We are invited to come to Communion under the deliberately deficient symbolism of the single species. As orthodox Catholics we know that our Lord is wholly present in his full Godhead and his full manhood under either Eucharistic sign. Yet we also respect the ways in which he allows himself to be given to us ... Today we receive him, quite deliberately, by the symbolism of incompletion … Today we have only a truncated Eucharist … for today Christ our Lord suffered the disintegration of his very being.” 

In the pandemic, of course, we’ve been receiving Communion in one kind now for many months. I long for the day when we restore the chalice to the congregation so that we can all receive in both kinds. In the meantime, our Masses share in this aspect of the diminished symbolism of the Good Friday liturgy—perhaps a fitting liturgical expression of our life together under pandemic conditions.

Still, the Holy Communion of Good Friday conveys the Lord’s life, grace, and power to all who receive it. Having venerated Christ on the cross, we receive him into ourselves—not just for comfort and consolation, but also for empowerment as agents of the cross: ambassadors of Christ’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. So here we have another turn to the horizontal. Just as in the Solemn Collects we prayed for the world that Christ died to save, so now in the Communion of the Presanctified we offer ourselves as living vessels to carry forth Christ’s salvation into that same world. 

Following Communion, we leave in silence. There’s nothing left to say. For the time being, the Incarnate Word has been silenced. We do well to keep silence too, waiting in hope and expectation for what God is going to do next.