Cyril's Good Friday Service

Just as I gave some historical information yesterday regarding the Eucharist, so I give some today regarding the crucifixion. Again, this comes from Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker. Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire.

Another controversy in Cyril [of Jerusalem]'s community was whether the crucifixion of Christ was shameful. Apparently, as late as the fourth century, the way Jesus died discredited Christian claims of Christ's divinity. The church sought to assign his execution a meaningful place in the scheme of salvation. Cyril argued that the Crucifixion was not shameful because the Resurrection had dispelled it ignominy. In keeping with New Testament texts, he said that Christ's death expiated sin and that his blood could protect against death. He likened Christ to the Passover lamb, which guarded against the angel of death and liberated the oppressed from a cruel tyrant. Cyril refuted those who claimed the Crucifixion was an illusion. He insisted that Christ's death revealed that he was human as well as divine. "Take the cross as an indestructible foundation on which to build the rest of the faith. do not deny the Crucified," he urged.

Though Cyril had a ready theological explanation for the Crucifixion, he consistently emphasized the Resurrection. "Now that the Resurrection has followed the cross, I am not ashamed to declare it." His church read accounts of Christ's resurrection every Sunday of the year, and every evening it observed the ritual of the Lucernare, the lighting of the lamps from the flame that always burned in the Anastasis. The fire symbolized the presence of the risen Christ. By Egeria's [and eye witness who's journal we have] report, the remembrance of the Crucifixion was observed one day a year, on the Friday of Holy Week. The Passion narratives were read on the legendary site of his Crucifixion (132-3).

If you find yourself attending a Good Friday service this evening, remember you are a part of a large and ancient tradition.

But I also find it informative to know that this is one day's focus in the life of Cyril's church, the rest of the year the focus was on Resurrection. And Resurrection is coming.