What's so good about Good Friday?
This was one of the all-time mysteries of my Catholic childhood. It wasn't good for Jesus and it sure as hell wasn't good for us suffering through the longest, most boring mass of the year. Not even the bit in the reading of the Passion when we were encouraged to personify the blood-thirsty mob by shouting (mumbling, really) "Crucify him! Crucify him!" could rouse us from our doldrums. What made matters worse, at the height of my parents' efforts to make my siblings and I good Catholics, Good Friday was only the second of four consecutive masses we had to endure (Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday being the others along with Easter Sunday--one involved kissing a cross and another washing someones feet, but I no longer remember which). I do remember that on Good Friday the immense, very realistic, crucified Christ that hung above the altar at St. Veronica's was placed in a giant purple velvet bag, later to be unveiled, still nailed to the cross, on Easter Sunday (hardly the effect they were going for, I would think, but I may be wrong). Wait, I am wrong. As that crazed sadomasochist Mel Gibson recently demonstrated, violence still sells, and Christ nailed to the cross is an image that's still pretty hard to beat. Would Jesus be who He is today if He died for our sins with a massive heart attack or a brain aneurysm?
posted by BayonneMike at 12:12 PM
10 Comments:
I ALWAYS felt extremely guilty as a kid (big surprise!) with the "Crucify Him, Crucify Him! part of the Palm Sunday reading of the Passion.
I felt almost as guilty eating Chinese food (chicken, is that considered MEAT? The eternal question for all Catholics looking for a loop-hole)last night.
My Mom used to make us sit silently between the hours of noon and 3pm...while Christ hung on the cross...every Good Friday. I remember laying on the couch with my back on the seat and my feet on the wall until she told me to sit up again. What torture...
Our reward? We'd color Easter eggs at 3:15.
HAPPY EASTER!
Yeshua Bar Yosev really had what could be considered a pretty good Friday. Well it could have been worse. Cross time about 6 hours -- even with scourging and smoting typical for political criminals or revolutionaries, crucifixion could last days.
Since Jesus was able to quote the 22nd psalm just minutes before his death, he probably WAS killed by a massive cardiac arrhythmia on the cross. This would have greatly lessened his suffering, which might have gone on to Sunday or Monday.
We might have been going to Church on Mondays instead of Sundays ... would have changed football forever.
Had the crucifixion it not already been spelled out for him in the old testament, I am almost certain that Jesus would have preferred to die of drowning or asphixiation from carbon monoxide. Virtually painless.
"Asphixiate him" would have been just as guilt rendering, Ang.
PS. I remember seeing you in Church, Mike. Strategically moved up to the same row as you...my crush.
Jesus Family Tomb
I apologize in advance if the HTML doesn't work...not sure if we can post links on the comments...
" But God demonstrated his Love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Greater Love has no man...
Angelissima, thought provoking stuff in that link, eh?
I recently read the book (The Jesus Family Tomb) and really enjoyed it.
What case does that book make, yakimba? That Jesus didn't ascend into the air after walking around a bit? Kind of amazing that we even need proof of this at this late date, no?
BayonneMike -- I think the film might have been more like that, trying to capitalize on angry reactions from fundamentalists. What I took from the book (and it is tied to the documentary) is that there is an historical account of this guy that goes way beyond what we've all read in the Gospels (at least the 4 that were chosen to help evangelize this Jesus movement). Also the world was different in a fundamental way, a way that is hard for us to imagine today. In a nutshell there were so few people living in that area (at that time) that statistical analysis of name combinations is a powerful tool. There were just thousands of people around Jerusalem, not 100s of thousands or millions.
Yak -- I agree with the notion of The Jesus Movement being manipulated by the originally chosen Gospels. While its intriguing to have historical pieces fit together in the search for the REAL Jesus(I love that stuff! Did you watch Barbarians Week on the History Channel?) I'd have to side with Mike a bit regarding his question,
"Kind of amazing that we even need proof of this at this late date, no?"
Its all about Faith at this point. Religion today is a man-made production suitable for framing.
The slip of rope I hang on to is the notion that most every culture on earth has some sort of "higher power" (more often than not including human sacrifice). Something is going on beyond death.
But, I guess we'll never really know what it is for sure until we get there.
I've read God: A Biography, The Gnostic Gospels, The End of Faith; Volatire's comments on the Lisbon earthquake--that's the one in 1755 where the quake and fire killed the faithful in their churches on All Saints Day and the flood finished off the rest; Christopher Hitchens: What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof; and any number of good arguments for both sdies. Conclusion: I have slept through the night and through anaesthesia and reappeared, always with the sense that I disappeared for awhile. It's hard to believe that one time I won't come back. If belief in a soul is a genetic device to protect me from the fear of nothingness, then so be it.
I believe in love too, as I once told newlywed [for the 10th time] Mel Torme when I introducded him to my bride. Mel said, "Hey that's great!" Love and the soul seem connected. That's probably a good start for a belief system, and what distinguished Christianity [love your enemy] from paganism [heads on spikes]. I agree that Jesus has been distorted and corrupted and would get a good parable out of the modern Vatican.
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