On Good Friday, tall ladders to the cross

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It is now late afternoon in Israel.
This is the day my Christian friends call Good Friday, and this is the hour when they solemnly reflect on the taking down from the cross.
Very soon it will be Shabbat evening. 

It was in Friedberg, a small town in the rolling green hills of Styria, Austria, that I first saw  statuary such as this!

Please click a few times to enlarge the photos and get the beautiful details.

The church was first mentioned in writing in 1377.
In 1706 it was expanded and magnificent frescoes were added.

The Baroque pilgrimage church and its surroundings can be seen here.
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I try to imagine how you Christian readers out there experience the Triduum, the three saddest days, as you await the joy of Easter Sunday.   Blessings to you.
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(Linking to inSPIREd Sunday.)

A thought for Mary on Good Friday

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Simeon said to Mary ". . . and a sword will pierce your own soul also.”   (Lk 2:34-35)
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Update Feb. 24, 2016: About the restoration of mosaics in the Calvary chapel:
http://www.terrasanctablog.org/2016/02/24/new-colors-for-the-chapel-of-the-crucifixion-at-the-holy-sepulcher/ 
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Orthodox Good Friday. A scene in glass

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Orthodox Christians are now in Holy Week.
Good Friday for the Eastern Christians is called Great and Holy Friday.

While at the Green Pilgrimage symposium (about which I still have much to tell you) at Jerusalem's International YMCA,   I discovered three unusual stained glass religious windows.
They are mounted in an inner wall that divides two meeting rooms.
(Reflections from the real windows and from lights were unavoidable.)
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I think this artwork is a painful reminder of a difficult day for Christians.
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A 1st C. nail in a foot bone

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A heel bone with a spike driven through it.
Found inside a 1st century  ossuary in a burial cave in Jerusalem.
Our only archaeological evidence (so far)  of a crucifixion.

The Israel Museum sign for this gruesome discovery says

In a burial cave in north Jerusalem, an ossuary was discovered inscribed with the name "Yohohanan son of Hagkol."
The iron nail embedded in the right heel bone indicates that Yehohanan was put to death by crucifixion, the torturous and humiliating method used by the Romans to execute rebels, murderers, and thieves.
Even though thousands of people were executed in this manner, this is the only archaeological evidence that has reached us.
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The bones of the deceased allow us to reconstruct the method used for his crucifixion:
his legs were nailed to the sides of the crucifixion post, while his hands were tied or nailed to the crossbar.

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You can watch a live telecast on your computer soon of the Way of the Cross of Good Friday, from the Colosseum of Rome, at http://www.vatican.va/video/index.html 
Pope Francesco will preside.
The meditations for each station of the cross were written this year by Lebanese Christians.
It starts a little after 21.05 Rome time (7.05 in Sydney, 13.05 in California, 10.05 in Hawaii).
Afterwards it will be available on video at the same Vatican Player website.

The printed Way of the Cross meditations are online now.  Very appropriate for the Middle East.
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The anointing stone, then and now

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Entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the first thing to greet you is a wide modern mosaic that shows the dreadful events of the first Good Friday.

In between the mosaic and the light of the door is the anointing stone, the stone of unction.
Some perceive the marble slab to be the 13th station of the cross, the station before the very last one.
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(This can be a contribution to Monday Murals at Oakland Daily Photo.)
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Ear- and earth-shattering thunder

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What are we to make of this?!
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It is said that on this day, Good Friday, Jesus agonized on the cross for six hours and during his last three hours, from noon to 3 p.m., darkness fell over the whole land.
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Well, just before noon today the sky over Jerusalem and my village turned black.
For just a few minutes big tear-like drops fell from the heavens.
And then--a clap of thunder like I have never ever heard, its first part a shrill screech like a bomb falling and then a huge boom, right over my head!!
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"And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, . . . the earth shook and the rocks were split . . ."
So says Matthew 27:50-51.
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And now, just after 3:00, the sky is calm and much brighter.
It is finished.
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Here is the tapestry icon of the Epitaphios ("winding sheet" or shroud) from the previous post.
It hangs in the Greek Orthodox Catholicon, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
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Has anything strange happened in your world this Good Friday?
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UPDATE 2018: See more about the Epitaphios here:
https://russianicons.wordpress.com/2018/02/25/two-plashchanitsa-inscriptions/
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Spelling it out

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I have lived as a working volunteer with a wonderful monastic community of contemplative Protestant nuns in Switzerland. During my years with the sisters I have lived their heavy and solemn feeling during the liturgies of Good Friday.
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Still . . . what is a blogging Jew to post on Good Friday?
Relations have improved in our times, and thank God for the State of Israel.
Historically, however, Holy Week has been a dangerous time for us.
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One knight in the First Crusade (1096) wrote, "Behold we journey a long way to seek the idolatrous shrine and to take vengeance upon the Muslims. But here are the Jews dwelling among us, whose ancestors killed him and crucified him groundlessly. Let us take vengeance first upon them. Let us wipe them out as a nation."
These Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land did indeed slaughter entire Jewish communities in Rhineland cities.
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Deicide was not the only charge. As recently as the early 20th century, pogroms erupted during Holy Week in Eastern European and Russia when rumors spread about Jewish "crimes." Inflamed by outlandish accusations such as the claim that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to make matsa for Passover, unruly gangs searched out Jews to kill and maim.

Two crucifixes that I will never forget are NOT IN ISRAEL but in the Czech Republic.
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This famous statue on the bridge in Prague is topped by Hebrew (!) letters spelling "Kadosh kadosh kadosh Adonai tsevaot," -- "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts."
(Well, this photo is from my second visit in 2006. By then someone had thankfully removed one and a half letters from the name of God, making it no longer his name.)
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I was even more shocked when we found the explanation in the Jewish museum:
A long time ago some Jew was falsely accused of writing something wrong in a letter. He was arrested and as a punishment was made to pay for these gold Hebrew letters on the crucifix.
Normally the sign says INRI.
But not in the medieval cathedral of Nymburk in central Bohemia.
There it was spelled out quite clearly: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
And the blood drips.
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Yes, Good Friday is a difficult day for both Christians and Jews.
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Below in the darkness, but shielded

A dark flower (that appears, briefly, in the secret places of our woods always around Holy Week). For the Orthodox Christians, now under the heaviness of "Good" Friday and Holy Saturday.
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Good Friday. Polish art on the Via Dolorosa

For Good Friday

And for the Christian friends on Good Friday, one of the "Servant Songs" of Isaiah.