Good Friday is my favorite day of the liturgical year. Perhaps you can chalk that one up to my melancholic temperament. I tend to think deeply on the tragedies of life, which to me are more powerful than euphoric moments. Isn't joy more powerful than sorrow? Isn't God a God of joy and love rather than a God of doom and gloom? Totes. However, like most things pertaining to God, there is a wide range of adjectives that can apply to how He reveals Himself to us. After all, there's a wide range of His life experiences: He was born in a manger; He was transfigured with Moses and Elijah. He spoke authoritatively to vast crowds; He was abandoned by all but one of his closest friends. He encompasses all things (omnipresence) and knows all things (omniscience). We think about these things, that is, how the Son of God found glory in being made incarnate in a manger, or how He won salvation for all men while at the trough of human emotion, because we can empathize. I doubt I'll see anyone transfigured in my lifetime and most of the people that bring in major crowds are singing ridiculously lewd lyrics or playing sports. To me, then, I feel that I am closer to knowing more about God when I dwell on the more tragic things in life.
The second reason that I love Good Friday is tied closely to the first. On an even deeper level than a simple feeling of proximity to God, this day reminds me every year why I am Catholic. Being raised in a good Catholic family means that in the vast majority of cases the teenager (or probably older people who wait to ask questions) will "break out". I'm no psychiatrist, but in my opinion it would seem that societal pressures that deem the Catholic family life "oppressive" get to the person. What follows is a loss of the moral compass (aforementioned "break out"), where the person thinks he has been oppressed and is now free from the constraints of morality. Then, after a span of time, the person must make a choice: ignore the urging of the conscience to follow natural law or recognize that true freedom consists in choosing to do good. I went through this. At the end of it I came to a firm resolution.
The reason I believe the Catholic Church to be true in what it teaches is that it emphasizes the value of suffering. It's something that every other religion on this entire planet teaches as something to avoid, or at the very least to deal with until you achieve Nirvana. For Catholics, suffering still sucks. It hurts. At least for us, though, we can turn that suffering into a good for ourselves and for other people. It ties into willpower as well. If you can suffer things well, you cannot be touched by anything. Your will is beyond reach. There's a reason why the term is "fair weather friends"; if there's no suffering to be overcome together that bond cannot be strong enough to overcome adversity. Your best friends are the ones who have been there through thick, but more importantly through thin.
Good Friday was a terrible day. Like a lot of things in the bible, naming the day the Son of God was executed as "Good" appears to be a contradiction at first glance. It's just another "stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles." But for Catholics, we get to find empathy in that suffering. We get to find strength for our daily trials and tribulations. We get to find Love, that thing that is all we need. So in summation, I hope you all have a joy-filled Good Friday. As you're eating your one meal of watery tomato soup or fish sticks (mom knows that one was at her), remember how blessed you are in your family, in your friendships, in what you believe. Remember how much those people love you, and remember too the One who made a bad Friday Good by His love for you.
~Worley
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