Good Friday April 10, 2020 – Morning
As a child I always wondered why this day was called “Good” Friday. When I asked the question, people and pastors always looked at me as if my question made no sense. The answers varied from “because we’ve always called it Good Friday” to it was good because it was the day of Jesus’ atonement for our sins.
Being the kind of person I am, none of those answers made any sense. Being told that something was “always” that way is clearly not a satisfying answer. Then I read that the word good had once meant holy. Now, that made more sense.
For, indeed, this is a holy day, the day we need to remember that people often die so that others may live. Just a few weeks ago a priest by the name of Giuseppi Beradelli for whom his parishioners had purchased a respirator because he had Covid-19 thanked them but gave the respirator to a young man he did not know so that the man would live. Fr. Beradelli was 72.