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The Anglican Parish of Christ Church Brunswick |
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The Anglican Parish of Christ Church Brunswick |
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GOOD FRIDAY, the most solemn day of the Church’s year, sees our churches stripped bare for the drama of Salvation which we are to celebrate – the passion and death of Jesus Christ. This is no mere commemoration of a past event on a day of the year so strangely called “Good”. It is a celebration in the present of a God who was always willing to die for us and who at a particular time and place did so. Such is the enormity of his love for us; such too is the enormity of our sin which led him to be crucified. Through our tears we see him and rejoice that the enormity of our sins cannot outweigh the enormity of his love.
We come on our knees to venerate the Crucified; not as spectators but as participants, seeking to enter into and share the mystery of his redeeming death. We do not come to mourn a tragedy or lament a defeat but to partake in the overthrow of the forces of darkness and evil and the triumphant vanquishing of death itself. Christ’s bitter death on Calvary embraces the agony and alienation of all mankind and in that moment of time he offers it up to God. So God enters into the suffering and death of every man through this point of human access.
In awe and wonder we gather around the altar of the Cross to feed on the broken Body and poured out Blood of Christ crucified. We come to share in the life that died; we go to live out his costly death in a suffering world that still awaits the redemptive touch of his Body.
