Song of the Day - 18th April

Today is Good Friday - the day when Christians globally remember the crucifixion of Christ on the cross.

Members of many Christian denominations observe Good Friday with fasting and church services. In many Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Methodist churches, the Service of the Great Three Hours' Agony is held from noon until 3 p.m.—the hours the Bible records darkness covering the land until Jesus' death on the cross.

The term Good Friday comes from the sense 'pious, holy' of the word good. Less common examples of expressions based on this obsolete sense of good include 'the good book" for the Bible, 'good tide' for Christmas or Shrovetide, and Good Wednesday for the Wednesday in Holy Week.

The poem I have set to commemorate this solemn day is "Good Friday" by Christina Rossetti.

In it, the narrator is struggling with a crisis of faith, that they can contemplate the crucifixion of Christ, His suffering and sacrifice without being moved, as others were moved. But in the final verse, the narrator pleads with God not to give up on them, to seek them out and smite out the coldness of the metaphorical stone.

Good Friday

By Christina Georgina Rossetti

Am I a stone and not a sheep

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,

To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon -

I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.