Holy Week 2021 - Good Friday Morning Prayer - Sanctifying the Hours

 Following the Lord’s Supper, he went to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, where after a period of agonizing prayer, he was approached by Judas who kissed him as a sign of betrayal. Likely around 4 to 6am he was arrested and brought before Annas and Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin who brought him up on trumped up charges. Around the time most of us were getting up this morning, between 6 and 8am, the Gospels are not clear about the exact timeline, Jesus was brought before the governor Pontius Pilate who found no reason to condemn Him, but sent him to the puppet-king Herod, who also failed to find a crime. Now with the crowd stirred up by the Sanhedrin, Pilate has Jesus scourged and then agrees to have him crucified, out of fear of a rebellion. Around 8am, Jesus begins to carry his cross through the streets of Jerusalem, and probably around the time you were starting your rosary, around 8:30am, Simon of Cyrene is tasked to help this stranger with the heavy burden.

Around the time we began morning prayer, with the words, “God come to my assistance”, “at the third hour of the day” as St. Mark puts it, Jesus was nailed to the cross, and experienced those first excruciating agonies as we prayed the penitential psalm 51 calling for God to have mercy on us in our offenses. Considering our own responsibility for the crucifixion of Our Lord, this prayer, psalm 51, is certainly an appropriate response.

Following morning prayer we will depart in silence and return to Church at the hour of the Lord’s final breath—“the ninth hour of the day” as Matthew calls it for the Good Friday liturgy of the Lord’s Passion. 

Today is a powerful day for pleading God’s mercy, for ourselves, for all mankind, for priests and religious, for those who reject God, for those who seem to be stuck in cycles of sin, for those who have become lukewarm, for those who near death, and the souls in purgatory. Today also begins The Divine Mercy Novena, which is prayed from Good Friday until Divine Mercy Saturday.

There is a tradition that  the Penitential Psalms, Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143 are prayed until we gather again at 3pm, sanctifying the hours with recollection of what the Lord is suffering. We do well to fast and pray, pleading to God for the purifying and washing that only he can accomplish, that he does accomplish, through the passion and death of His Son, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.