Wonder Days

Some things in life are hard to understand. Someone you love gets sick. Something that seems wrong happens anyway. You want to fix it and you can’t. And no one can fully explain why.

The story of Good Friday is one of those hard things. But it is also — somehow — one of the most important stories ever told.

Jesus had spent three years traveling through the land of Israel, teaching and healing, eating with people no one else would sit with, telling stories that made people think. He had twelve close friends, called disciples, who went everywhere with him. Crowds gathered wherever he went. Many people loved him deeply.

But not everyone. Some of the religious leaders felt threatened by him. Some were afraid of what the Roman rulers — the powerful empire that occupied their land — might do if things got out of hand. And some had simply decided he was dangerous.

So they arrested him.

On a Thursday night, after sharing a last meal with his disciples, Jesus was taken by soldiers. His friends scattered, frightened. He was questioned through the night and into the morning. And on a Friday, he was sentenced to death — crucifixion, which meant being nailed to a wooden cross on a hill. It was a terrible kind of death. The hill was called Golgotha.

His mother Mary was there. Some of his closest friends were there. They stood and watched.

He died that afternoon. And the people who loved him were devastated.

This is Good Friday. The name can seem confusing — how can something so sad be called good? Different people explain it different ways. Some say the word “good” once meant “holy.” Others say that what seems like the darkest moment in the story leads, just a few days later, to something no one expected. So even in the grief, there is something that points forward.

But for now — on Good Friday — it is a day to sit with the sadness. To not rush past it.

How people celebrate today:

Good Friday is a quiet and serious day. In churches, there is no ringing of bells. The altar is bare — no flowers, no decorations. Many people wear darker colors. The mood is still and solemn, which means full of weight and seriousness.

In many places around the world, people take part in processions — walking slowly through the streets together, sometimes carrying a wooden cross, to remember the walk Jesus made to Golgotha.

Some families fast on Good Friday, which means they eat very little or nothing for part of the day. Others eat simple foods — no meat, just fish or vegetables — as a way of marking the day as different from ordinary days.

In the afternoon, often at three o’clock — the hour Jesus is said to have died — churches hold services. People read aloud from the story of the crucifixion. Sometimes they kneel. Sometimes there is long silence.

There is a type of bread called hot cross buns — small, sweet, spiced rolls with a white cross marked on top — that have been connected to Good Friday for hundreds of years.

It is a day when many people cry. And that’s okay. The disciples cried too.

Grief is how we show that something mattered. That someone mattered. The sadness of Good Friday is real, and it’s not something to be rushed through or explained away. It just is. And sitting with it, together, is itself a kind of love.