Good Friday is the day when Christians remember the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ.
The Three Hours’ Devotion was introduced into the Church of England in the nineteenth century. There will be four more addresses on the theme of the week and silence for people’s own reflection. People can come and go during the Three Hours if they don’t want to stay for the whole thing. The final hour is the Liturgy of Good Friday, which includes choral music and a reading of the Passion Narrative.
There will be an address from Canon Rosie Woodall, Canon for Worship and Spirituality and Vice Dean. The reflections in this Holy Week are all based around the women who witnessed, and often played a key role in, the events of the final week of Jesus’ life. Most of them are unnamed in Scripture – and admittedly with one or two of them, I’m stretching whether they existed at all – but I wanted to reclaim their stories to make the week less dominated by the famous men we all know about. It was the women after all who remain true to Jesus while the men condemn, betray or abandon him. It seems particularly appropriate in the year in which we celebrate thirty years of women priests in the Church of England to bring women to the forefront of the story.
