As you have may have read in my recent photo posts for Palm Sunday and Holy Thursday, I am on a photography sabbatical for this year's Holy Week so that I can have a singular focus on this most sacred time of year. With that, I want to share last year's photos of Good Friday at Assumption Grotto, in Extraordinary Form. If you are in the area, do stop in. Also, be sure to check the Mass and Confession Schedule at Grotto, as well as the upcoming orchestra Mass details for the 9:30am Mass on Easter Sunday and the Noon Mass on Divine Mercy.
If you catch the slideshow at the beginning, you will see that I was permitted in the sacristy for the beginning, as the priests prepared for the start of the Tre Ore service.
Go to my Smugmug page for the 2009 Good Friday, Tre Ore, service at Assumption Grotto based on the 1962 missal.
From the Office of Readings for today (second reading):
St. John Chrysostom speaks on the power of Christ's Blood (Cat. 3, 13-19)
A reading from the instructions of St John Chrysostom to the catechumens
[The power of the blood of Christ]
Do you wish to know of the power of Christ's blood? Let us go back to the ancient accounts of what took place in Egypt, where Christ's blood is foreshadowed.
Moses said: ‘Sacrifice a lamb without blemish and smear the doors with its blood.’ What does this mean? Can the blood of a sheep without reason save man who is endowed with reason? Yes, Moses replies, not because it is blood, but because it is a figure of the Lord's blood. So today if the devil sees, not the blood of the figure smeared on the doorposts, but the blood of the Reality smeared on the lips of the faithful, which are the doors of the temple of Christ, with all the more reason will he draw back.
Do you wish to learn from another source the power of this blood? See where it began to flow, from what spring it flowed down from the cross, from the Master's side. The gospel relates that when Christ had died and was hanging on the cross, a soldier approached him and pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out water and blood. The one was a symbol of Baptism, the other of the mysteries. That soldier, then, pierced his side: he breached the wall of the holy temple, and I found the treasure and acquired the wealth. Similarly with the lamb. The Jews slaughtered it in sacrifice, and I gathered the fruit of that sacrifice -- salvation.
‘There came out from his side water and blood.’ Dearly beloved, do not pass the secret of this great mystery by without reflection. For I have another interpretation to give you. I said that Baptism and the mysteries were symbolized in that blood and water. It is from these two that the holy Church has been born ‘by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit’ , by Baptism and by the mysteries. Now the symbols of Baptism and the mysteries came from his side. It was from his side, then, that Christ formed the Church, as from the side of Adam he formed Eve.
That is why in his account of the first man, Moses has the words, ‘bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh’, giving us a hint here of the Master's side. For as at the time God took a rib from Adam's side and formed woman, so Christ gave us blood and water from his side and formed the Church. Just as then he took the rib while Adam was in deep sleep, so now he gave the blood and water after his death.
Have you understood how Christ has united his bride, the Church, to himself? Have you seen with what kind of food he feeds us all? By the same food we are formed and fed. As a mother feeds her child with her own blood and milk, so too Christ continually feeds those whom he has begotten, with his own blood.
Te Deum Laudamus! Home
The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!