This article is a part of a series on the seasons of the liturgical year: Advent I; Advent II ; Advent III ; Christmas; Epiphanytide; Septuagesima; Lent I; Lent II; Lent III, Passiontide I, and Passiontide II.
(LifeSiteNews) — In this series, we have been considering how the Church uses her liturgy and liturgical year to show us who Christ really is, and to draw us into union with him.
In the previous parts, we considered Christ’s silence and composure amidst his sufferings – especially as they are commemorated liturgically on Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday. We noted that he suffered not as a passive victim of circumstances, but freely and willingly.
This is because his passion was the offering of the perfect sacrifice to God, offered on behalf of fallen man. No man in history but Christ could have offered this sacrifice, as he was the only person who was not only true man, but also true God.
The atonement achieved by Christ is a great mystery – as well as a great confusion to some – and it represents his great triumph on earth, as I have explained elsewhere.
There is little of this sense of triumph in Good Friday’s Tenebrae service. Consider this responsory as an example:
All my friends have forsaken me, and mine enemies have prevailed against me; he whom I loved hath betrayed me. Mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me; he breaketh me with breach upon breach: and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
℣. I am numbered with the transgressors; and my life is not spared. (Resp. 1)
Thus we can see – as we might expect – that the Church certainly gives full voice to the interior sorrow of Christ on Good Friday.
But if we look closely at Good Friday’s main liturgical rite, we might be surprised at how full of triumph and power it is.
The Good Friday liturgy can be disorientating. In some ways, it resembles a Requiem Mass, and it features four parts that seem quite separate. However, when we consider the passion as Christ’s triumph, the rite’s structure and meaning become much clearer.
The First Reading and Tract
The first reading is taken from the prophet Osee, and it talks of God striking us – and even hewing and slaying us by the words of the prophets. But amidst this violent language, it already talks of the resurrection on the third day, and of God’s mercy.
The tract responds to the reading by continuing its sense of awe and fear. It sings of how “in the midst of two animals [God] shall be made known.” This unusual text (which does not appear in the Vulgate) is variously understood as referring to the two Cherubim of the Ark of the Covenant, the Ox and Ass of Bethlehem, and the two thieves on Golgotha.
But unlike many of the propers of Passiontide – such as Psalm 21 on Palm Sunday – it is not obvious that these words and sentiments are to be attributed to Christ himself.
Instead, it seems to be humanity that is afraid of the coming wrath of God. And it is right that we should be afraid: our race is not only guilty of an ocean of sin, but also of the unspeakable crime of “deicide” – the killing of God in his human nature.1 As we shall see, the gravity of this crime figures largely in the rite.
How are we to be delivered from the wrath which we have heard about in this reading and tract?
The Passover
The second reading is Moses’ explanation of exactly how the Hebrews are to perform the annual Passover ritual. This somewhat prosaic reading might seem bewildering – but hearing it today casts Christ’s sacrifice as the fulfilment of what was achieved and promised in the original Passover in Egypt.
This reading casts a different light on the subsequent tract than we might expect. The tract first appears to be spoken by Christ:
Deliver me, O lord, from the evil man; rescue me from the unjust man. […]
Keep me, O Lord, from the hand of the sinner; and from unjust men deliver me. (Ps. 139)
But as with the previous tract, the attribution of these words to Christ does not seem to fit. We know that Christ longed for this hour of suffering, and willingly offered himself to his suffering with all his heart. The passion itself would not have occurred if Christ had been kept from the hand of the sinner, or had been delivered from unjust men.
But we must recall that it is sung as a response to the reading, which recounts the deliverance of the Hebrews from Pharaoh and from slavery in Egypt. In this light, this tract seems to be our cry, rather than Christ’s – we are calling for him to deliver us from the wrath of the first reading, to fulfil what was foreshadowed in the Exodus, and to deliver us from Satan and slavery to sin.
Immediately following this tract, we are presented with the sung Passion – the fulfilment of the original Passover and of the tract’s prayer for deliverance.
The Passion
All the accounts of the passion present Christ as serene, composed and silent – but this is most clear in the account of St. John. This has already been the subject of previous parts in this series, so there is no need to repeat it here.
At the end of the Passion, we genuflect at the moment in which Christ dies, and are silent. Following this, the narrative continues in the same simple and distinctive tone – until we reach the prophecies that Christ’s bones will not be broken, and that “they shall look on him whom they pierced.”
At this moment, the tone takes on a very dramatic form. We hear that Jesus is laid in the sepulchre – at which point the reading ends. And there we have it: the question of how our race is to appease the wrath of God is answered – by the sacrifice of Christ, our great High Priest.
As we hear this tone – which has the capacity (when sung in a particular way) to convey musical terms the gravity of our race’s crime of “killing God” in his human nature – we might ask ourselves: “What have we done?”
The solemn prayers
At that, the Church’s ministers begin “the solemn prayers.” In brief, these prayers might manifest those offered by our High Priest both on the Cross, and even now in Heaven. In the letter to the Hebrews, we are told:
[Christ] hath an everlasting priesthood: Whereby he is able also to save for ever them that come to God by him; always living to make intercession for us. (Heb. 7.24-5)
These prayers are not random “good vibrations,” by which we wish others well. They are the prayers of a High Priest, who is now a King, reigning over the earth. Rather than being bewildered by the long series of intercessions, we can use this opportunity to enter into Christ, and to join our Head in prayer, as members of his mystical body.
But following these prayers comes a striking rite, which is unlike anything else in the Church’s liturgy.
The Adoration of the Cross
The twentieth century liturgical writer Fr. Johannes Pinsk writes:
It is the unveiling and veneration of the cross which reveals to us the innermost meaning of the entire Good Friday liturgy.2
Very little about this ceremony of adoration is tender or mournful. As the cross is gradually unveiled, the thrice-rising chant tone is powerful and impressive – quite unlike the meditative tone used in the tracts.
The cross is no longer the instrument of torture and death, but the throne and judgment seat of Christ. As the hymn Vexilla Regis sings, God “hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.” This is crucial for understanding this part of the rite.
We abase ourselves before the cross, and process forward to venerate it. As this veneration is taking place, the choir sings “The Reproaches.” These are some of the most celebrated parts of the rite, and of the Church’s liturgy as a whole. They are sung as the words of Christ to his people:
O my people, what have I done to thee? or wherein have I afflicted thee? Answer me!
Because I led thee out of the land of Egypt, thou hast prepared a cross for thy Savior.
Because I led thee out through the desert forty years: and fed thee with manna, and brought thee into a land exceeding good, thou hast prepared a Cross for thy Savior.
What more ought I have done for thee, that I have not done? I planted thee, indeed, My most beautiful vineyard: and thou hast become exceeding bitter to Me: for in My thirst thou gavest Me vinegar to drink: and with a lance thou hast pierced the side of thy Savior.
These texts are often treated as if they are a mournful lamentation of a sorrowing Christ, but this is hard to justify when we examine the text more closely. First, these texts are at least as accusatory as they are mournful, if not more. Second, our response is not one of sympathy – but rather awe and contrition:
O holy God! O holy strong One, O holy immortal One, have mercy upon us.
In this center of the rite itself, sinful humanity is called to account for its sins. It is a sort of preparation for the Final Judgment, and an opportunity to seek reconciliation with he who was “bruised for our sins” (Is. 53.5).
This is also the moment of Christ’s triumph and reception of public homage from his people. Pinsk suggests that this public homage should lead each of us “to celebrate that triumph [of the cross] personally by his conduct and posture in public as well as private life.”3 In other words, this solemn homage is our opportunity to recognize the kingship of Jesus Christ over ourselves, our hearts and over all of society.
As the Reproaches continue, our cry (“O holy God! Etc.) ceases, and we listen in silence to the remaining accusations of our King. In our individual veneration of the Cross, we accept the justice of these accusations, just as we accepted the death sentence imposed on each of us in Adam on Ash Wednesday.
The acceptance of these accusations and this death sentence has special meaning for the catechumens slated to be baptized on Holy Saturday – about whom the whole Lent cycle has been concerned. It should remind the rest of us that the sentence given in Eden has, in a sense, already been fulfilled in baptism, and we have been delivered by the one whom we have wronged. As St. Paul explains:
All we who are baptized in Christ Jesus are baptized in his death? For we are buried together with him by baptism into death: that, as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no longer. For he that is dead is justified from sin.Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ. Knowing that Christ, rising again from the dead, dieth now no more. Death shall no more have dominion over him. For in that he died to sin, he died once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Rom. 6.3-10)
But as soon as the Reproaches finish, we find our voice again, and our voices rise with the following antiphon:
We adore Thy Cross, O Lord: and we praise and glorify Thy holy Resurrection: for behold by the wood of the Cross joy has come into the whole world.
It is very striking that in the Good Friday liturgy, at the point most focused on the cross, we recall the resurrection – and that we sing it to the same melody as the great hymn of praise, Te Deum laudamus.
Immediately after this, the choir takes up the same theme of triumph in the antiphonal hymn Crux Fidelis:
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle
With completed victory rife!
And above the Cross’s trophy
Tell the triumph of the strife:
How the world’s Redeemer conquer’d
By the offering of His life.
Bend thy boughs, O Tree of glory!
Thy relaxing sinews bend;
For awhile the ancient rigor,
That thy birth bestowed, suspend:
And the King of heavenly beauty
On thy bosom gently tend!
Thou alone wast counted worthy
This world’s ransom to uphold;
For a shipwrecked race preparing
Harbor, like the Ark of old;
With the sacred Blood anointed
From the smitten Lamb that rolled.
At this, the liturgy is practically finished. All that remains is for the Blessed Sacrament to be consumed, and for us to be left with an empty tabernacle – just as Our Lady and the others were left with an occupied tomb.
The Holy Communion
In the traditional rite, the sentiment of the Crux Fidelis continues even now. As the ministers bring the Blessed Sacrament from the Altar of Repose, the choir sings the Vexilla Regis:
The royal banners forward go
The Cross shines forth in mystic glow,
Where life Himself our death endured,
And by His death our life procured.
Fulfill’d is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old
To all the nations: ‘God,’ saith he,
‘Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.’
The following rite is very short, even if it is lengthened with a distribution of Holy Communion to the faithful. In former times, this was limited to the priest alone – which may also have made the congregation reflect more on the gravity of the crimes committed in the Passion, and recalled the loss experienced while Christ lay dead in his human nature.
With this part of the rite complete, the liturgy is over. A mournful Vespers often follows.
Conclusion
The main liturgy of Good Friday has a very different textual emphasis to that of Tenebrae and the Stations of the Cross. As with the Mass of Palm Sunday, these ceremonies commemorate the bitterness of Christ’s passion.
But in this main liturgical rite, we see that we really caused these sufferings to Christ, and that we must repent and submit to him as the head of the Church – outside of which there is no salvation. This rite – like that of Passion Sunday – is full of dignity, power and authority. It shows that Christ’s sufferings are ordered towards our redemption, and establish him as the triumphant High Priest and King.
“And all of this” says Pinsk: “[W]e must emphasize the point again and again – in the somber darkness and sorrow of Good Friday!”4 This may seem strange, but it shows that Good Friday admits a wider and richer range of truths than we might expect. Pinsk continues:
The Church is evidently celebrating this day from an entirely different point of view than the one we usually ascribe to her. Who must be re-educated, the Church or we ourselves?5
Who indeed? If we approach the Church’s liturgy limited by our preconceived notions, we miss the opportunity to be formed by her and drawn into life with Christ. I hope that some of these considerations are helpful to readers as we approach the holy rites of the Triduum. We should study and appreciate these rites, not just for their aesthetic value – or even just for their doctrinal interest – but so as to abide more and more in Christ by faith and charity. As Pius XII taught in Mediator Dei:
[The liturgical year] requires a diligent and well ordered study on our part to be able to know and praise our Redeemer ever more and more.
It requires a serious effort and constant practice to imitate His mysteries, to enter willingly upon His path of sorrow and thus finally share His glory and eternal happiness.6
References
1 Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, Q46 A12.
2 Johannes Pinsk, The Cycle of Christ, p 44. Trans. Arthur Gibson, Desclee Company, New York, 1966.
Fr Johannes Pinsk (1891-1957) was involved with the twentieth century liturgical movement in ways that many readers would consider regrettable. However, his works have a wealth of interesting information about the liturgical year, which I would like to share. They also contains some things which traditional Catholics might not appreciate. My purpose here is to present what is good, along with some comments, to help us appreciate the holy Roman Liturgy.
3 Ibid. 55-6
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid. 56
6 Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei, 1947, n. 161. https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_20111947_mediator-dei.html