For the past 10 years, Good Friday has probably been my most intense day of the year. As an Episcopal Priest, it is an emotional day, the one day set aside for us to contend with all of humanity’s worst inclinations. To contend with betrayal and death and absence and silence. The services on this day have no dismissal, people simply leave in silence.
It’s not just an emotionally challenging day, but a logistically challenging day as well. At Christ Church in Harvard Square where I work, we usually offer two main services, each with a prelude of walking the Stations of the Cross. In between those services, we offer a children’s service that involves about 15 adults from the parish re-enacting some of the key scenes of the day, followed by an Easter egg dying party that involves about 400 hard-boiled eggs, to be hidden on Saturday in the Old Burial Ground for the Easter egg hunt. The whole effort involves upwards of 50 volunteers.
In-between all of that are moments stolen to finish Easter sermons, or make pastoral calls, or runs to the hardware store for some forgotten thing we would need before the week was over. It is an intense day toward the end of an intense octave — eight days of services, each unique in character that tell some aspect of our most sacred story.
Of course, none of those things are happening today. As best we can, we have tried to provide resources for our people to worship at home, to record the key aspects of our Holy Week services, to provide familiar words, a taste of the music we are known for, and images of familiar faces and past years’ services. And while it’s been a hectic couple of weeks, it was all “in the can,” by Thursday.