Nam­ing the day on which Je­sus Christ was con­vict­ed, cru­ci­fied and died on the cross at Cal­vary as “Good Fri­day,” seems a ma­jor con­tra­dic­tion. How can it be “good” when He who is re­port­ed to have been sent by his Fa­ther to lead mankind away from sin­ful na­ture and acts of sin­ful­ness, was met­ed out with what was an ex­cru­ci­at­ing death be­tween two thieves. What a place and cir­cum­stance for the “Sav­iour of the World” to have been cru­ci­fied!

Sure­ly, ac­cord­ing to world­ly reck­on­ing, not a place for the re­put­ed Sav­iour of the World to die. In­deed, while on the “Old Rugged Cross” fac­ing a cer­tain death, one of the crim­i­nals he was strung up be­tween shout­ed to him: “Are you not the Christ? Save your­self and us!”

Yet, ac­cord­ing to the Chris­t­ian lore, cru­ci­fix­ion was the mo­ment of the great­est ex­pres­sion of love for mankind by Je­sus; who is con­sid­ered in the Chris­t­ian faith as the Son of the Almighty God giv­en the mis­sion on Earth by his Fa­ther for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and on­ly Son, that who­ev­er be­lieves in him shall not per­ish but have ever­last­ing life” - John 3:16.

But ac­cord­ing to Chris­t­ian teach­ings, if Christ did not rise three days af­ter his earth­ly death, then it would have all been in vain and so Chris­tian­i­ty would re­al­ly not be worth the ef­fort. The ad­her­ents, as a tes­ti­mo­ny of their faith, point to the emp­ty tomb at Gol­go­tha as the ev­i­dence to jus­ti­fy their be­lief.

There­fore, to­day, Good Fri­day, the re-en­act­ments of the tra­vail of Je­sus on the cross, which are tak­ing place at dif­fer­ent spots here in T&T and all over the Chris­t­ian world, are for mem­bers of the faith, be­lief in the Holy Scrip­tures that for Je­sus there was and con­tin­ues to be life af­ter death.

In very sec­u­lar terms, T&T and mankind the world over, need a re­gen­er­a­tion from the life we live large­ly with­out con­cern for the oth­er per­son; those out­side of our im­me­di­ate cir­cle.

Away from the per­son­al lev­el, our world is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing great bru­tal­i­ty by coun­tries one against the oth­er. There is trau­ma, there is pain and suf­fer­ing, dis­place­ment, pover­ty and hunger of unimag­in­able pro­por­tions caused and dri­ven by in­jus­tice.

Sure­ly, it must strike those na­tions which claim Chris­tian­i­ty, the death of Je­sus on the ver­i­ta­ble Good Fri­day and his ris­ing from the tomb as the un­der­ly­ing and dri­ving force of their civil­i­sa­tions, that there is a large mea­sure of in­con­gruity in their claims and the ac­tu­al­i­ty of their ex­is­tence.

Sim­i­lar­ly, all of us as in­di­vid­u­als in this holy pe­ri­od must re­flect on our lives, our ac­tions and our treat­ment of fel­low trav­ellers. We must do so in the con­text of the claims we make of fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ples of the Chris­t­ian faith to be the ba­sis up­on which we con­sid­er each oth­er.

We can­not hon­est­ly point fin­gers at oth­er na­tions and their prac­tices against the weak and suf­fer­ing coun­tries and con­ti­nents, un­less we here at home take on the larg­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ing for those in need dur­ing this pe­ri­od when the Sav­iour of the Chris­t­ian faith died to save mankind.