We call this Friday good

More than a decade ago, at work, someone said to me, “Happy Good Friday!” which struck me as wildly inappropriate. I wondered if he spoke from ignorance or from mockery. He was not a co-worker but a co-tenant of the building where I worked, and he was a strange fellow. (In case anyone doesn’t know, Good Friday commemorates Jesus’s crucifixion—not a happy occasion.)

Remembering that greeting this morning, I also remembered the line, “In spite of that, we call this Friday good.” I thought it came from a John Donne poem, so I searched online and found, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.” I found a youtube of someone named John Melton reading it. I don’t know anything about Mr. Melton, but he did a good job reading the poem. However, it did not contain the line I had thought of.

It turns out the line comes from T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker,” one of his “Four Quartets.” It could also have come from somewhere else; Eliot was a great one for quoting others in his poems. “East Coker” is a relatively long poem; the line comes at the end of part IV. I found a recording of Eliot himself reading it, but he is not the best reader of his own work; he is rather affectless. So I found a recording of Ralph Fiennes reading it, and that was better.

So, yes, this is the day of the agonizing death of our Lord. He was the lamb sacrificed for our sins—the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That is why, in spite of his suffering and death, we call this Friday good.