Christians worldwide will observe Good Friday, one of the religion’s most somber days of the year, a couple days before Easter celebrations commence.
The holy day, one that commemorates Jesus Christ’s agony on the cross, is one of five Christian celebrations that pay homage to the events leading up to the Crucifixion and Christ’s miraculous resurrection on Easter Sunday. The time period is known as Holy Week.
“Good Friday has been, for centuries now, the heart of the Christian message because it is through the death of Jesus Christ that Christians believe that we have been forgiven of our sins,” Daniel Alvarez, an associate teaching professor of religious studies at Florida International University, told USA TODAY in an March 2024 interview.
Good Friday is also considered a day of mourning, as observers take time to meditate on Christs’ death, specifically on the suffering he faced leading up to his Crucifixion.
Here’s what to know about Good Friday.
What is the significance of Good Friday? And when is it?
Good Friday, the second-to-last day of Holy Week, falls on Friday, April 18.
The holy day commemorates “Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate, his sentence of death, his torture, his crucifixion and burial,” per the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College.
“It is called ‘good’ Friday in the obsolete sense of the word ‘good’ – connoting something ‘holy’ or ‘pious’ (‘Holy Friday’)” Trinity College explains. “For many Christians, Good Friday is a day of fasting, with the faithful attending a church service where they will meditate on and venerate the cross of Christ.”
It is a day of “sorrow, penance and fasting” for Christians, who use the day to remember the suffering and agony Christ endured on the cross, according to Britannica.
“Good Friday is part of something else,” Gabriel Radle, an assistant professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, shared in a previous interview with USA TODAY. “It’s its own thing, but it’s also part of something bigger.”
What foods are eaten (or not eaten) during Good Friday?
Some observers use Good Friday as an opportunity to fast, Rev. Dustin Dought, executive director of the Secretariat of Divine Worship for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told USA TODAY in a February 2024 interview.
“This practice is a way of emptying ourselves so that we can be filled with God,” Dought said.
Catholics, also considered Christians, avoid all meat (except fish) on any Friday during Lent, a 40-day season of prayer, fasting and giving. The practice is to honor the way Christ sacrificed his flesh on Good Friday.
Off-limit meats include:
Catholics are allowed to eat fish because it is considered a different type of flesh, according to the Marine Stewardship Council.
Are Good Friday and Passover related? In what way?
There is a direction connection between Good Friday, a Christian tradition, to Passover, a Jewish holiday also known as Pesach, Alvarez said. Passover, one of the most widely celebrated of Jewish holidays, commemorates the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt.
“The whole Christian idea of atoning for sin, that Jesus is our atonement, is strictly derived from the Jewish Passover tradition.”
Passover commemorates the day the “Angel of Death” passed over the homes of Israelites, a people enslaved by the Egyptians. Families were advised to paint the entrance of their homes with the blood of a lamb, when the exodus happened, so God would spare the lives of their firstborn sons, Alvarez said.
Christians, on the other hand, refer to Christ as “the lamb of God” because he, like the lamb blood used to save the lives of the Israelites’ first-born sons, was sacrificed to protect humanity from the “wrath of a righteous God that cannot tolerate sin.”
“Jesus is the [God’s] firstborn, so the whole idea of the death of the firstborn is crucial,” according to Alvarez, who added that the significance behind the blood of a lamb in both respective scriptures tie them together.
The same can be said about first-born sacrifice and the possibility of bloodshed, two common religious themes.
Contributing: Jordan Mendoza, USA TODAY
