Good Friday

This from the Catholic Encyclopedia about Good Friday.

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.

When I was a girl we would go to the theater in our town and watch a movie about the Passion. In those days stores closed from noon to three. Some businesses were closed for the whole day. There was a time when my youth group went to Zion Illinois to see the Passion Play. It was quite a production. Later on, when I worked for our mayor, his store was always closed from 12 to 3. Other stores started observing this tradition too...in our small town. Our Church today, will celebrate Good Friday with a Passion Liturgy at noon, a Divine Mercy Novena at 3pm, and the Living Stations of the Cross at 6pm. So there is something for everyone. Joe and I plan to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ between 12 and 3 today. We saw this movie at the theater a few years ago...it is a difficult movie to watch.

I probably won't be posting again until after Easter. Our family will be here tomorrow and we will go to my son's on Easter Sunday. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a Blessed Easter.

Balisha