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Easter is the principal feast of the Christian Church as it commemorates the passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Good Friday
On the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, Christians mourn Christ’s death by observing a rigorous fast and by attending services in the Church as an expression
of great devotion and love towards Christ. St Luke’s Gospel describes Christ’s Crucifixion thus:
‘Then the whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate. And they began to accuse him saying: ‘We found this man perverting our nation, and
forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a King . . .‘ Pilate then said to them, .... Behold nothing deserving death has been done by him, I will therefore chastise him and
release him’.
But they all cried out together ‘Crucify him!’ They led him away. Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And Jesus
said, ‘Father forgive them; for they know not what they do’. It was now about the sixth hour and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed, and the curtain of the
temple was torn into two. Then Jesus crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last.
Easter is usually observed on the first Sunday after the full moon that comes on or after the vernal equinox (marking the arrival of Spring), on the third
day after Good Friday and ends a period of forty-day spiritual preparation — constituting the. Lenten season — in remembrance of Christ’s forty-day fast.
away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body, while they were perplexed about it, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel, and as they were frightened
and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, that the son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful man, and be crucified,
and on the third day rise’.
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