The Fourth Word: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

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A Note about Today's Good Friday Service

Good Friday is the commemoration of the death of Jesus Christ. Originally, it was a day of fasting in preparation for the unitive celebration of the death-resurrection-exaltation of Jesus; no liturgy was held on that day. In the 4th century, at Jerusalem, a procession was staged from Gethsemane to the sanctuary of the cross, followed by readings about the passion. This was the beginning of the Good Friday observance as it is now known. In the tradition recovered in our present Book of Common Prayer, the liturgy of the day—which we celebrated this morning—consists of reading the passion, solemn prayers for church and world, and communion from the sacrament consecrated at the Maundy Thursday evening service.

This service of preaching and music on the seven last words was invented by the Jesuit order in Spain. The cathedral at Cadiz commissioned Franz Josef Haydn to compose a work of music based on Christ’s seven last words from the cross. Each section of music was introduced with a reading and brief commentary on the meaning of the words, and the service was offered from noon to three, the hours the gospels say Jesus hung on the cross. By the late nineteenth century, the service had become popular among Protestant churches, especially in cities where people were able to leave work for brief periods and join in sections of the service as time permitted. St. Bartholomew’s began offering this service in 1933, the first year of the Rev. George Paul T. Sargent’s rectorship. In introducing the service he wrote that “it is to me one of the most heart-searching and helpful services of the whole year, considered by many as important as Christmas and Easter. There is no better way to enter into the spirit of Holy Week and to follow, in our thoughts, the blessed Savior’s steps as he goes to Calvary.”