Good Friday - Ironic Beauty

By Harry Marston

As I child and throughout my teenage years, Good Friday was always a day of uneasiness for me. I didn’t like the fact that things were different – church looked sad with the statues covered up, with the altar bare; at home we ate simple food and generally had a (suitably) miserable day. To me it felt like a day wasted of the holidays.

As my faith and understanding grew, I began to appreciate the importance of this day and began to become irate when Tesco produced slogans such as, “Good Friday just got better!” And now, during the past few years, I have become totally immersed in the ironic beauty of Good Friday, the reverence and indeed the sadness. I appreciate the subtle way the Church plunges us into the emptiness of the day only to propel us into the extravagance of Easter. We, through the traditions of the Church, are the women weeping at Calvary yet also Mary Magdalene when she found the resurrected Christ.

It makes me think that simple changes can change a child’s feeling and prospective. So, this Eastertide, why not make your classroom look even brighter and more colourful? A simple change such as flowers on your prayer table can achieve this.