Good Friday.

[angledge]

Why is Good Friday called "Good" Friday? To me it seems like it should be called "Worst Friday EVAR".

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Believe it or not, before I was an atheist, I was a church-going Catholic (hey, it was a post-Vatican II church. It was round. And my high school, though Catholic, was Franciscan. Patron saint of animals. Very granola.)

Aaaannyway... As the doctrine goes, prior to Jesus's death, none of us could get into heaven. All those folks who died before 33 AD? Hanging about the pearly gates like people wanting to get into a nightclub. Or maybe hanging about in Limbo, or Pergatory. Stories differ on this point, depending on whose writings your particular brand of Catholicism liked to follow. But the point is, the Big Prize, a/k/a Heaven, was denied to lowly mortals until the Big J arrive. God wasn't going to let the rest of us stink up the place until the guest of honor arrived.

So Good Friday is the day he opts to make the supreme sacrifice and soak up all our bad sinning karma so we can get into Heaven. We still had to wait a couple of days ('till Easter, the day he actually rose), but GF was the beginning of the end of the waiting.

Despite my flip tone, and the encroaching secularism of Easter, and the tendency of religious types to get distracted by other issues, this single point is THE point of Catholicism (and most other Christian religions). This is where it differed from other, similar religions (e.g. Mithraism): Jesus died to make the rest of us clean enough to get into the Best Place Evar after we die.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

...and the encroaching secularism of Easter...

Are you suggesting that there is a cultural War on Easter? Alert FOX News immediately!