Saturday, March 22, 2008

Why is Good Friday 'Good'?

I have no idea. I've been wondering this the whole day and Google hasn't really given me any really satisfying answers. The only real answer is that 'Good' is perhaps derived from 'God', just like 'Goodbye' is derived from 'God be with you'. So maybe its God's Friday...

Other reasons are to do with all the good that came of this day. Yet, I still can't really reconcile such a painful day with the word 'good'.

I don't know. Maybe Bilbo's linguistics skills can help me out here :)

Here's a photo of the 3pm Good Friday service that we attended. We were late and had to sit outside. They had it fully enclosed and had a portable air conditioner every few meters so it was cool. I was surprised at how effective their simple cloth enclosure and temporary roof was.

5 comments:

Bilbo said...

Interesting question! I've never (at least, not recently) thought about the derivation of "Good" in Good Friday. I suspect that your guess that "Good" derives from "God" is probably as good an answer as there is. I'll take a look at the Vatican (Holy See) website this weekend and see if there's any explanation. There may also be something at American Magazine, the Catholic weekly (http://americamagazine.org). I'll let you know if I find anything.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

It's also known as 'Great Griday' in the Holy Land.

Tiggerlane said...

Wow...never thought about that. I looked at the origins on wikipedia.org, and got more confused than EVER. Go see - there are MANY more names for today!

elizabeth embracing life said...

I don't really know the "good" in the day, but I always thought it was God's way of looking down on Jesus, and Jesus doing a good thing. The brave man he was.

John A Hill said...

Interestingly enough, not everyone believes that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Many believe that the day of Crucifixion was actually a Thursday. The problem comes in when gentiles try to fix the day based on Jewish texts.

We do know that it was the "Day of Preparation" or the day before the Sabbath. Normally this would mean Friday. However, the Passover always begins with a Sabbath day no matter what day of the week it begins. It also ends with a Sabbath day eight days later. It is possible to have two Sabbaths on consecutive days and a third one on the eighth day.

It actually makes more sense (at least to me) if Jesus were laid in the tomb before sunset on Thursday, been in the grave for the Passover Sabbath, the weekly Sabbath and then raised on the morning of the third day. But when we're talking about messing with centuries old traditions of the church, traditions often become more important than truth.

So--none of this had anything to do with your post...like I told Bilbo, I need to get my own blog.