The Great Friday

The Great Friday is the saddest, the worst day for the Son of God. He was examined, found guilty and Pilate was forced to condemn Jesus to crucifixion, due to the pressure of the crowd, who according to the Synoptics had been coached to shout against Jesus. On the Great Friday Jesus was buried is a stone sarcophagus is a cave, on the entrance of which the authorities placed a huge stone and guards. A Divine Liturgy is not celebrated on Good Friday in the Eastern Orthodox. The congregants relive the events of the day through public reading of the Psalms and Gospels, and singing hymns about Christ's death. Visual imagery and symbolism is also often used: in the morning, a large cross is moved to the front or center of the nave, and a two-dimensional painted body of Christ, or corpus, is placed on it. During the afternoon prayers it is removed from the cross and taken to the altar in the sanctuary, and an Epitaphios is brought down to a low table in the nave representing the tomb; it is often decorated with an abundance of flowers. The Epitaphios itself represents the body of Jesus wrapped in a burial shroud, and is a roughly full-size cloth icon of the body of Christ. During the evening prayers, the shroud is part of a procession outside the church, and is then returned to the tomb. The Orthodox Christians are supposed to abstain from all food and drink the entire day to the extent that their health permits. They commemorate the suffering of Jesus and His death and resurrection by passing down the low table on which the Epitaphios is laid.