Fri 29th Mar 2024 - 12:00pm to 3:00pm
O sacred head, surrounded by crown of piercing thorn!
O bleeding head, so wounded, so shamed and put to scorn!
Death’s pallid hue comes o’er thee, the glow of life decays;
yet angel hosts adore thee, and tremble as they gaze.
Today we remember the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. The bleakest, most shocking and solemn day of the Christian year.
The Good Friday characteristic episode is the veneration of the Cross with a sequence of meditations and music known as the Three Hours’ Devotion.
It is a widespread custom for there not to be a celebration of the Eucharist on Good Friday. In some places (though not at the Minster) the consecrated bread and wine remaining from the Maundy Thursday Eucharist is given in communion.
The Minster remains stripped of all decoration (which happened on Maundy Thursday evening at the stripping of the altars): There are no candles burning. Electric light is minimal. There are no ornaments. There are no flowers. The Minster is bare
It continues bare and empty through the following Saturday, which is a day without a liturgy—there can be no adequate way of recalling the being dead of the Son of God, other than silence and desolation. But within the silence there grows a sense of peace and completion, and then rising excitement as Easter morning draws near………by then we are filled with hope for the dawn of a new day—See what a morning, gloriously bright, with the dawning of hope in Jerusalem.
