We welcome you to St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church and to this service,
praying that as you share in this commemoration of our Lord’s death it
will be a powerful part of your journey through Holy Week and towards
Resurrection.

Good Friday is the second of the “Great Three Days” (in Latin, Triduum
sacrum), and is the most somber and pain-soaked day of the Christian
calendar. In token of this desolation, the church sanctuary is completely
bare, and a crown of thorns rests on the altar. The liturgical color is black,
the color of mourning and death, for today we remember Jesus’ death.
Good Friday teaches us that we must die with Jesus, who died for us. We
are reminded that it is only through the sacrificial and life-giving love of
Jesus that we can do this hard work of acknowledging what within us also
needs to die, so that Christ may be truly alive in us when the glory of
Easter dawns.

Our Good Friday service includes a form of intercession known as the
Solemn Collects, dating from early Rome, when we pray for the whole
world. Then, just as Jesus shared the last supper with his disciples before
his passion and death, so we gather tonight to share Holy Communion
from the Reserved Sacrament (consecrated last evening during our
Maundy Thursday worship) before we continue to trace Jesus’ steps to the
Cross. We are fed, yet empty; confused and heartbroken; fully embracing
our deep sorrow that the Lord of all life has known the pain and ugly
brutality of human deception and earthly death. We share our pain and
emptiness in holy community, and we hold it together.

Faithfully, Deacon Dina
(Deacon in Charge at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church)