Good Friday Prayers and the Reproaches

The prayer that opens this page is the one the AngelGuard app’s Good Friday meditation closes with, printed word for word as the app prays it. Say it slowly, before a crucifix if you have one, whenever the day allows; read aloud, it takes a few minutes. It moves through seven steps:

1. Sorrow. Five short lines of contrition set each sin beside a moment of the Passion: the nails, the gall, the disciples who ran, the denial of Peter.
2. The Reproaches, answered. “You have led me out of Egypt, and I have led You to the Cross”: the prayer replies, in the first person, to the chant the choir sings at the Veneration.
3. Holy God. The Trisagion, the thrice-holy hymn sung between the Reproaches, first in Latin and then in English.
4. The Cross unveiled. The words the priest sings as he unveils the Cross, with the people’s answer, “Come, let us adore.”
5. Those who stood there. Mary, with the opening lines of the Stabat Mater; then John, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and the women of Galilee.
6. The Anima Christi. “Soul of Christ, sanctify me,” the fourteenth-century prayer to the wounded Christ, in full.
7. The last word. “Consummatum est,” in Latin and in English, and then the Sign of the Cross.

No Mass is offered anywhere in the world on Good Friday, which falls on March 26 in 2027; the day turns on one afternoon liturgy and the hour of the Lord’s death. A simple plan for the day:

• Go to the liturgy. The Celebration of the Lord’s Passion is held at about three in the afternoon, and many parishes add an evening service for people who work. It is not a day of obligation, yet if you can go, no devotion at home can take its place. If illness or age keeps you home, ask your parish to bring you Holy Communion: the Church allows it to be taken to the sick at any hour of Good Friday.
• Stop at three o’clock. Saint Mark gives the hour: “And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying: Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani?” (Mark 15:34). In the old reckoning of the day the ninth hour came at about three in the afternoon. Wherever you are, make the Sign of the Cross and pray an Our Father, the prayer that opens this page, or the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, which many Catholics pray at three. With children, hold up a crucifix at home and let each one kiss it.
• Walk the Way of the Cross. Many parishes pray the Stations of the Cross at noon or in the evening, and a family can pray them at home before a crucifix.
• Begin the Divine Mercy novena. Its nine days start on Good Friday and end on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday: see the Divine Mercy novena.
• Keep the evening still. Leave the screens dark, read the Passion according to John, chapters 18 and 19, and let the house stay quiet until the Vigil.

The Reproaches, in Latin the Improperia, are the chant of the Veneration of the Cross: while the faithful come forward one by one, Christ speaks from the Cross to the people he saved. Each verse sets a gift of God in the Exodus beside a wound of the Passion, and the refrain takes its words from the prophet Micah: “O my people, what have I done to thee” (Micah 6:3).

The English here is from The Complete Office of Holy Week, in Latin and English, a book entered for copyright in New York in 1875 and printed by Benziger Brothers. In that book the choir answers the first three verses with the Trisagion, printed once here, and each of the last nine with the refrain, “My people! what have I done to thee?” To pray them at home, one voice reads each verse and everyone gives the answer: the three lines of “Holy God” after each of the first three verses, and the refrain after each of the last nine. A few of the book’s words have aged: buffets are blows of the fist, a gibbet is a gallows, and Pharao and the Chanaanites are Pharaoh and the Canaanites. Today’s Missal uses a newer translation, so the words sung in your parish will sound different.

The Latin of the Reproaches is the text the Roman Missal printed for centuries, given here as the same 1875 book prints it beside its English. The Trisagion keeps its Greek: one side of the choir sings “Agios o Theos,” and the other answers “Sanctus Deus.”

The Good Friday liturgy is not a Mass: by a tradition older than any rubric, the Church offers no Mass on this day, nor on Holy Saturday until the Vigil. Holy Communion is given at this afternoon service, and taken to the sick, from hosts consecrated at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper the night before. The Holy See’s letter on the Easter feasts (1988) asks that it begin at about three o’clock, or at another hour when people can come, though never after nine at night.

Its three parts come down from ancient tradition and may not be rearranged:

1. The Liturgy of the Word. The priest and ministers enter in silence and lie prostrate before the bare altar while the people kneel. Then come Isaiah’s song of the suffering servant, the Letter to the Hebrews on the high priest who learned obedience, and the Passion according to John, read in full; every year these are Isaiah 52:13–53:12 and Hebrews 4:14–16 with 5:7–9, then John 18:1–19:42. Ten solemn intercessions follow, from the Church and the Pope to unbelievers, rulers and everyone who suffers, because Christ died for the whole world.
2. The Adoration of the Cross. The Cross is shown to the people, and each person comes forward to venerate it while the Reproaches are sung.
3. Holy Communion. The Our Father is sung, Communion is given, and after a prayer over the people everyone genuflects to the Cross and leaves in silence.

The Veneration of the Cross is the part of Good Friday most people remember: a crucifix is carried in or slowly uncovered while the priest sings three times “Ecce lignum Crucis,” and each time the people answer “Venite, adoremus.” In the 1875 English: “Behold the wood of the cross, on which the Salvation of the world was hanged. Come, let us adore.”

What to do. When your row goes up, walk to the Cross and make one simple act of reverence, as your parish does it: a genuflection, a deep bow, a kiss on the feet of the figure of Christ, or a touch of the hand. Then go back to your place and kneel for a while as the Reproaches go on. Anyone present may come up to venerate the Cross, including those who will not receive Communion afterward. The Church wants each person to come up in turn, since this personal act is the heart of the rite; only when the crowd is very large are the people invited to venerate all at once from their places.

The prophet Isaiah described this day centuries before it came: “But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). The Church reads those words before the Passion on Good Friday, and they hold the whole day in one verse: the wounds are his, and the healing is ours.

Saint John adds that a soldier opened the side of Jesus, “and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34). On this day the Church remembers that she herself was born from that wound. What looks like an ending is an opening. Before he bowed his head, Jesus said: “It is consummated” (John 19:30). In the Greek of the Gospel that is a single word, and it means finished in the sense of complete: nothing was lacking in what he gave for your salvation, and it is yours to receive, not to earn.

So you do not need to feel anything in particular today. Stand where Mary stood, with John and the women. Look at the Cross for a while without saying much. Name someone you love who is suffering, or someone you have lost, and leave that person there with him. Then let the rest of the day be quiet, as the tomb was quiet. Easter will come; today, stay.