Why We Celebrate Good Friday

Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus.  It's called "good" because even though it was a dark day, when Jesus was abandoned by his disciples and was crucified on a cross, His death redeemed us and provided a way for us to have a relationship with God the Father.

"Holy Week is a week like no other.  The Sundays at either end of it celebrate (arguably) the two most amazing events in history: the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus.  The implications of that sequence of Gospel events are endless: there’s always something new to learn from them, there’s always a fresh churn of emotions to experience from them, there’s always so much that we are called to do in light of them.  While most events and commemorations are usually summed up in a day, the passion and death of our Lord takes a whole week to process before we move on to Sunday.

In our culture rife with fierce individualism mixed with the unceasing seesaw between being workaholics or lazy, it can be very difficult to see “going to church” as anything more than a Sunday affair.  But the Church Calendar refutes this, saying “no, you cannot come to worship only on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday and expect to appreciate the whole story.  You need to invest in this.”  And so we have the great and ancient tradition of Holy Week, where we walk through the Gospel events in real time, from the triumphal entry to the death and finally the resurrection of Christ.

By gathering to worship each day of the week we’re simply hitting “repeat” on the passion & death narratives of Christ, seeking to see it from as many different angles as possible.  Towards the end, especially, we’re repeating the story in slow motion: the last supper and Jesus’ arrest, the trial, suffering and death, and his repose in the tomb, until he rises again." ~ [Father Matthew Brench]
http://leorningcniht.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/holy-week-2014/