Why Is It "Good" Friday?

Why Is It "Good" Friday?

 

A few years ago, I watched a television commentator, probably purely in the interests of affability, extend hopes that his audience would have and enjoy ”a happy Good Friday,” a wish equivalent to hoping Jews would have a fun Holocaust observation or that Ukrainians enjoy reflecting on Russia’s seizure of Crimea. 

Good Friday is only “good” considering what happened over two thousand years ago on Calvary or Golgotha, the site where Jesus Christ was crucified and in the context of what Christians believe happened three days later on what is now called Easter Sunday when He was resurrected from the dead. 

As a child, I was always bewildered as to why the Son of God endured the ignominy of public humiliation and torture and why He allowed Himself to be strapped to a cross like a common criminal and permitted Roman soldiers to pound spikes into His hands and feet when He could have simply vaporized His captors at will and zapped Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas into fiery oblivion. 

Later, as a rebellious, Catholic adolescent, I was equally befuddled by restrictions on what I could and not do on Good Friday such as attending church services and suffering through the onerous burden of being silent between the hours of 12 and 3 PM, the time generally considered the period  following Christ’s condemnation and scourging when He hung, nailed on a cross. 

Today, in my dotage, . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=36706.)