“Good Friday is a fast day created by the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century A.D. (long after Jesus died). The day is dedicated to commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus.” “I’ve read that the word good used to have a secondary meaning of holy, but I can’t trace that back in my etymological dictionary.”
“Good, in this sense, means ‘holy,’ and indeed Good Friday is known as Holy and Great Friday among Eastern Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox. Good Friday is also known as Holy Friday in the Romance languages.” “English isn’t a Romance language but a Germanic one.”
“The Friday you mention is also called in various countries Holy Friday, Black Friday, Great Friday, Long Friday and Silent Friday “ “Sometimes, too, the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons; so today in Denmark.” “Germans refer to Good Friday as Karfreitag—that is, Sorrowful or Suffering Friday.” “Calling the day of the Crucifixion ‘Good’ Friday is a designation that is peculiar to the English language. In German, for example, it is called Karfreitag. The Kar part is an obsolete word, the ancestor of the English word care in the sense of cares and woes, and it meant mourning.”
“So, in the end, the historical origins of why Good Friday is called Good Friday remain unclear, but the theological reason is very likely the one expressed by the Baltimore Catechism: Good Friday is good because the death of Christ, as terrible as it was, led to the Resurrection on Easter Sunday, which brought new life to those who believe.”
“I think we call it Good Friday because, in pious retrospect, all that tragedy brought about the greatest good there could be.” “In fact, it was the greatest Friday in the history of the human race, because on that day Jesus Christ won our salvation.”
[Plagiarized from on-line sources too numerous to document.]
About annecwoodlen
I am a tenth generation American, descended from a family that has been working a farm that was deeded to us by William Penn. The country has changed around us but we have held true. I stand in my grandmother’s kitchen, look down the valley to her brother’s farm and see my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Hannah standing on the porch. She is holding the baby, surrounded by four other children, and saying goodbye to her husband and oldest son who are going off to fight in the Revolutionary War. The war is twenty miles away and her husband will die fighting. We are not the Daughters of the American Revolution; we were its mothers.
My father, Milton C. Woodlen, got his doctorate from Temple University in the 1940’s when—in his words—“a doctorate still meant something.” He became an education professor at West Chester State Teachers College, where my mother, Elizabeth Hope Copeland, had graduated. My mother raised four girls and one boy, of which I am the middle child. My parents are deceased and my siblings are estranged.
My fiancé, Robert H. Dobrow, was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. In 1974, his plane crashed, his parachute did not open, and we buried him in a cemetery on Long Island. I could say a great deal about him, or nothing; there is no middle ground. I have loved other men; Bob was my soul mate.
The single greatest determinate of who I am and what my life has been is that I inherited my father’s gene for bipolar disorder, type II. Associated with all bipolar disorders is executive dysfunction, a learning disability that interferes with the ability to sort and organize. Despite an I.Q. of 139, I failed twelve subjects and got expelled from high school and prep school. I attended Syracuse University and Onondaga Community College and got an associate’s degree after twenty-five years. I am nothing if not tenacious.
Gifted with intelligence, constrained by disability, and compromised by depression, my employment was limited to entry level jobs. Being female in the 1960’s meant that I did office work—billing at the university library, calling out telegrams at Western Union, and filing papers at a law firm. During one decade, I worked at about a hundred different places as a temporary secretary. I worked for hospitals, banks, manufacturers and others, including the county government. I quit the District Attorney’s Office to manage a gas station; it was more honest work.
After Bob’s death, I started taking antidepressants. Following doctor’s orders, I took them every day for twenty-six years. During that time, I attempted%2
Anne C Woodlen: Notes in Passing 
Pingback: GOOD FRIDAY A DAY OF RELECTION « Vine and Branch World Ministries
Pingback: Good Friday « David's Commonplace Book
Pingback: Why do I call it “Good Friday”? | Kevin Nunez
‘Plagiarized’ or not, -still a very cool posting. Two smiles and a circle. 🙂 🙂 O
Thanks very much–what’s the circle mean?
We’re all in this crazy world together. What goes around comes around. You pick it.