Good Friday at the Syriac Catholic Archdiocese of Homs

On the tune of humble and poignant Syriac hymns and melodies, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop Mar Julian Yacoub Murad, Archbishop of Homs, Hama, Nabek for Syrian Catholic , presided over the rite of prostration of the cross and the burial of the crucified in the Hamidiye Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, with the participation of  P. Michel Numan, the parish priest, deacons, altar servers, the choir, and a large crowd of believers.

The ritual began with a procession inside the church, where Bishop Murad carried a wooden cross on his shoulder, and placed it at the end of the procession on a platform representing Calvary at the main altar, surrounded by two candles representing the two thieves.

  Prayers, hymns, and readings were then recited, followed by prostration of the cross, with incense and a deep bow before the cross and the bier, repeating:

Let us prostrate to the Holy Cross by which we are saved

Then the bishop mummified the cross by washing it with rose water, then wrapped it in linen after applying myrrh and aloes, and placed it in the casket.

Then the procession begins inside the church towards the site of the grave, where the cross was buried under the altar of the cathedral for the believers to be blessed by it.

There was a speech by the Bishop of Naaman, in which he contemplated the spiritual meaning of Good Friday.

  Where Jesus Christ took our image distorted by sin to give us again the image of the children of God,

He died to give us life. He opened his heart to give us love, complete, pure, free and redeeming. He took our death to give us his life.

He also stopped at the cry of Jesus on the cross, which is the deepest cry of our human existence: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

 Jesus carried this cry of ours and presented it to his Father. Christ gave us the answer through his death. He presented himself as a mortal to tell us that death is not the end of everything. It is only the beginning. It is entering into a love relationship that does not end and does not quench, which continues for a renewed eternity in beholding the face of God and living with Him in the kingdom. It is also the cry of the voiceless, the millions of people who die every day from hunger, injustice, and because of wars. It is the cry of those who suffer from persecution, discrimination, and segregation…

From the top of his cross, Jesus embraced all of our cries, calling on us to return to God, making the wound in his heart a gateway to God our Father. Christ taught us how to transform pain from a state of despair into a source of salvation: we are children of hope. We believe in a God who suffered for us and conquered pain through his resurrection. To give us life.