Today is the day we mourn the Passion and Death of Our Lord. And as such, things go a little differently at our home. We purpose to reserve certain times to reflect and call to mind Christ's suffering throughout the day and avoid the same distractions we would while grieving any other loved one. It is also the Last day to get all the thorns out of our Crown of thorns and give alms by making many sacrifices. All of these things can also be carried over to Holy Saturday tomorrow as we are keeping one long vigil until Easter.
Our avoidances pave the way for those set apart times so I'll start with them.
Avoiding the Good to Make Room for the Better
Our first Good Friday avoidance is meat and snacks. Today is a day of fasting and abstinence, but with a lot of young kids that looks a little different than just a bare plate. The Pascal fast traditionally begins after the Maundy Thursday Mass and continues until the one attends the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. And it is a mirroring of Christ's experience on those days. With our family make-up we observe this ancient tradition by going only meatless on these two days. Pink smoothies are a Good Friday staple along with hot crossed buns with paste crosses. We wait to give them their icing crosses for Easter supper. Like Christmas Eve, a few hours before the Vigil we put out a cheese board with fruit and bread or crackers.
We encourage a quiet atmosphere during this day, especially from the hour of His death at 3pm on. This is a lot easier said than done when 5 of your 7 children are boys! But we still try. We do this with the sacred music we put on low in the background, different Stabat Mater classical settings, and not using artificial lights. The boys have a competition to see who can turn off the most lights when we tell them it's Good Friday.
After the Maundy Thursday gospel the bells are gone until Easter. In their place is used a wooden clapper called a crotalus, from the greek word for rattle. It is used for the Angelus on the last two days before that prayer changes to the Regina Caeli for the duration of the Easter season. The Story of the Bible audiobook (Ch. 122 on), Board games, Holy Week picture books are pulled out instead of relying on rowdiness outside and tv. Some outside time is allowed without a ruckus, but it's not the usual free for all. And we do watch a version of the Passion depending on who's awake.
Another activity we try to eschew in our family but specifically today is complaining. The kids get this idea pretty quickly when the response is always a reminder of the Passion and Christ's extreme suffering.
The Suffering of Christ and our Children.
We don't sugar coat what happened to Christ today, however we do keep our descriptions age appropriate. This is the pinnacle of our history and faith. This is why we think it is important for our children to know all the events of Holy Week. And reading the actual Passion accounts in each gospel are a great place to start.
Each gospel's Passion was written by a different person, so it has different details included. Throughout Holy Week the traditional gospel readings are all of the Passions, so we match our daily readings to these days. Children don't need a dumbed down version of these events, the gospels are very clear without being gruesome. And in this way our children get all the details of Christ's lasts days and suffering from the Word of God itself. We also remind them of where the sorrowful mysteries that we regularly pray fit in to the chronology. And of course, we still have conversations about these at the same time and answer their questions in line with our historic faith - not making stuff up or throwing out guesses. They'll get enough of that from the world when they grow up. Now is time for setting the foundation of truth. Good Friday's gospel is the Passion according to St. John found in chapters 28 and 29.
A Day of Devotion
Today is also a day characterized by devotion in our home, as if we ourselves were at the foot of the cross. We set this tone by dispersing different penetration goal devotions throughout the day. And we have a beautiful bouquet of devotions to keep us reflecting on Christ this day so that idol hands don’t have the opportunity to become the devil’s workshop.
The sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, the Veneration of the Cross, and the Stations (free booklet here) of the Cross are main stays. And I made a free printable sheet of just the Adoration of the Cross that can be done with your family at home (click on photo) and the music recordings for it are here.
For the Rosary we continue to follow the Passiontide tradition of replacing the Glory Bes with, "Christ became obedient unto death. Even unto death upon a cross." This practice reflects the absent Glory Bes during Passiontide in the daily office.
At times, we chose from the following devotions too:
- Holy Saturday Tenebrae - prayed Friday night. (free booklet here.)
- St. Clare's Litany of the 5 Wounds
- The Litany of the Holy Face
- The 40 Hours devotion
- Divine Mercy Chaplet
- Similar to Christmas Eve, on Holy Saturday we put on a Passion Play.
The Divine mercy novena also begins today. Or you could pray a Good Friday dry mass with your family. You can find the reading and mass propers here. The Good Friday mass is always a dry mass because after Maundy Thursday no new hosts are consecrated as the blessed sacrament until Easter. This is explicit in the full name for this days mass - the Good Friday Mass of the Presanctified.
As I mentioned about our quite soundtrack for today is different classical music settings of the Stabat Mater. This is our favorite setting by Antonin Dvorak to get your family started:
I pray y'all have a somber Good Friday that draws your whole family closer to Christ.
Genie