My good friend John wrote recently. He wanted to know—or perhaps he looked forward to me explaining—exactly why we call today “Good” Friday.
On the surface, it’s a branding disaster. We are, after all, commemorating a crucifixion. Usually, when we describe a day involving state-sponsored execution, “good” isn’t the first adjective that leaps to mind. We aren’t supposed to celebrate bad things happening to our worst enemies, so why do we slap a smiley-face on the day the central figure of the Christian faith was put to death?
I consulted the Holy Trinity of modern information: The Church, Google, and the Farmer’s Almanac (I’m still not sure which one carries the most weight). They all offer the same semantic shrug: in the “Olden Days,” the word good actually meant holy or pious, not necessarily “Happy.” Their official line is that the day is “good” because it marks the redemption and salvation of humanity through sacrifice.
I’ll be honest: that answer won’t quite cut it for John, and it doesn’t quite sit right with me either. It feels a bit like calling a root canal “delightful” because your tooth stops hurting a week later. So, I’ve been doing some thinking.
Perhaps it’s called “Good” because it marks the definitive end of the Lenten marathon. After forty days of denying ourselves that afternoon cookie or that evening glass of wine—reaching Friday feels like emerging from a desert. After six weeks of what felt suspiciously like “Hell,” any finish line looks “Good.”
Or maybe it’s a liturgical relief. It is the one day of the year when the Catholic Church doesn’t hold a proper Mass. I can see a lot of devout daily pews-sitters—the ones who’ve been attending daily services in a blur of incense and Latin—checking their watches, realizing they get an hour of their lives back, and whispering, “Good. Thank God.”
Then there’s the secular perspective. For many school is out and work is shortened, for the schoolchild who avoids a math test and the parent who gets a reprieve from the corporate grind, the theological implications are secondary to the primary joy of a long weekend. For them, it is, quite literally, a very good Friday.
I don’t mean to make light of the darkest day in the human story—the moment where humanity looked God in the eye and decided we’d had quite enough of His “love your neighbor” talk. But maybe, just maybe, the name isn’t about the event itself.
Maybe we call it “Good” for the same reason I love a sappy, high-stakes movie: because we’ve already read the spoilers. We call it “Good” because we are looking at the calendar through the lens of Sunday morning. We can endure the tragedy of the second act only because we know the Third Act is a standing ovation. We call it “Good” Friday because, in the grandest twist in literary history, the Protagonist doesn’t stay dead—and any day that sets the stage for an empty tomb is a pretty good day indeed.
Leave a Reply +