Good Friday 2019

Main Service - Celebration of the Passion
Today’s liturgy centres on Jesus’ Passion (his sufferings) and death on the Cross for our salvation. In order for us to   enter more deeply into this great mystery, the “Celebration” is marked by deep silence. Please use these quiet moments to recollect yourself in the presence of Our Crucified Lord, accompanying him in spirit through the pain he endured - like the Mary and John did at Calvary.
Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine:
never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine.
This is my friend, in whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend! (Samuel Crossman, 1664)
 
On this and the following day, by a most ancient tradition, the Church does not celebrate the Sacraments at all, except for Confession and the Anointing of the Sick. Holy Communion is distributed from the Sacrament reserved last night at the Altar of Repose. The church remains stripped of all decoration. It continues bare and empty through the following day, 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 the Easter Vigil draws near.

Family Service - Stations of the Cross