Good Friday: The Significance of the Saddest Day for Orthodox Christians

Today, for the Orthodox world, is Good Friday – the saddest day of the year – the day when the Savior was crucified, to atone for our sins.

In all churches in the country, priests bring out the shroud, a symbol of the Lord's tomb, and in a sign of humility, believers pass under it. Holy Communion is not performed, and the bells toll mournfully after the Christ's funeral service.

On this day, the fast is especially strict - nothing is eaten or drunk, and the hymns are dedicated to the sufferings and death of the Son of God.

Bulgarian Patriarch and Metropolitan of Sofia Daniel: "Today, this tendency that every person has, each one of us from the time of the fall, our ancestors, to judge, to think of ourselves as very righteous, as very knowledgeable, manifests itself in the culmination of pronouncing judgment on God. To condemn the righteous judge. We humans, who sin daily, and so often sin, and into what great sins we fall, on this day we have not hesitated to pronounce judgment on God, to condemn him to death. And the Sanhedrin pronounced, and confirmed by the Roman governor, this death sentence, and on the incarnate God, but also on the Word of God, which was announced centuries and millennia before. This salvation, which the Lord will perform through his coming into the world. We pronounce judgment, because the sentence that was pronounced is that Jesus Christ made himself equal to God, i.e. condemned for blasphemy. Yes, but at the same time, when he speaks of the Messiah, he calls him the strong God, the father of eternity. Today, 2000 years after these events, all people see the cross that crowns the temple. This prophecy is fulfilled - they will look upon the one they pierced. Today, all of humanity, looking at the Orthodox church, sees the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. We look at the one they pierced for our salvation."