Today is Good Friday

From 12 noon to 3 p.m. it is most appropriate to be prayerful and remember what a terrible and glorious price was paid to ransom the human race from its birthright of sin.

Jesus willingly suffered and died for each and everyone of us. In itself this is both a glorious and sorrowful mystery that we can never fully understand because the testimony of the cross appears as folly to mere human reasoning, but in God's mind it is the pure essence of perfection.

Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.

O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

(Excerpt from The Exultet: The Easter Proclamation, an ages-old part of the liturgy of the Easter Vigil of the Church)