Good Friday

Mattias Grünewald, Crucifixion (Isenheim Altarpiece, ca. 1506 to 1515)

Good Friday (Old English: anga frigedæg "Long Friday") is the Friday before Easter and the sixth day of Holy Week. In Christianity, it commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which initiated the Mystery of Golgotha, which, according to Rudolf Steiner, is the central event of the entire development of the earth and humanity.

Rudolf Steiner's spiritual research confirms that, according to the Julian calendar, the death of Christ on the cross actually took place on Friday, 3 April 33 at the ninth hour, i.e. at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. However, this date is not considered historically certain.

„On a Friday, the 3rd of April in the year 33, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And there also took place the birth of the I in the sense in which we have often characterised it. And it is quite indifferent on which point of the earth the human being lives, or to which religious confession he belongs, that which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha applies to all human beings. Just as it is true for all the world that Caesar died on a certain day, and not another day for the Chinese and yet another day for the Indians, so it is a simple fact of occult life that the Mystery of Golgotha took place on that day and that one has to do there with the birth of the I. This is a fact of a quite international kind.“ (Lit.:GA 143, p. 163)

According to Rudolf Steiner, the Mystery of Golgotha is to be understood as a mystical fact through which the Christ united with the earth and thereby gave it its meaning.

„Just as life is inaccessible to human knowledge, so is death inaccessible to the true knowledge attained in the supersensible worlds. In the whole realm of the supersensible worlds there is no death. One can only die on earth, in the physical world or in the worlds which resemble our earth in their development, and all the beings who are hierarchically higher than man have no knowledge of death, they only know different states of consciousness. Their consciousness can temporarily be so lowered that it is similar to our earthly state of sleep, but it can wake up again from this sleep. There is no death in the spiritual world, there are only changes of consciousness there, and the greatest fear that man has, the fear of death, cannot be felt by one who has ascended to the supersensible worlds after death. There is therefore no death for beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies, with only one exception, that of the Christ. But in order that a supersensible entity like the Christ might pass through death, he had first to descend to earth. And this is what is of such immeasurable importance in the Mystery of Golgotha, that an entity, which in its own realm could never have experienced death in the sphere of its will, had to descend to earth in order to undergo an experience peculiar to man, namely, to experience death. A being, unique in its kind, which until then had only been cosmic, united itself with earth evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, through the death of the Christ. Since then it has lived on earth in such a way, is so bound to earth, that it lives in the souls of men on earth and experiences life on earth with them. Therefore, the whole time before the Mystery of Golgotha was only a time of preparation in the evolution of the earth. The Mystery of Golgotha gave the earth its meaning. When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the earthly body of Jesus of Nazareth was given over to the elements of the earth, and from that time the Christ was connected with the spiritual sphere of the earth and lives in it.“ (Lit.:GA 152, p. 39f)

Emil Bock, one of the co-founders of the Christian Community writes about this:

„In the midst of the Golgotha eclipse, a mystery was revealed to which we can only cautiously point. The body hanging on the cross began to shine. When in some rural areas crucifixes with a gilded body on a black cross stand in the fields and along the paths, an important mystery of Good Friday lives on in them out of a naive and wise folk tradition. A secret glow of the sun broke through the dusky midday night. The Christ-sun showed itself as the outer sun darkened. An Easter ray was already weaving its way into the darkness of Good Friday.

The last of the seven words of the cross, "It is finished", does not mean that the agony is over. It means that complete victory over the power of death has now been achieved. While death otherwise hurls and banishes man, whom it has monkeyed with earthly matter all his life on earth, the Christ, in dying, goes straight towards the earth. The blood flows from his wounds, his soul goes with it. With the blood from the wounds of the crucified, his soul flows over the body of the earth. when otherwise a man pours out his blood, the blood and the soul go the opposite way. Here the soul goes with the blood. And then the body is lowered into the grave. The earth opens up in the earthquake and takes the body of the Christ into itself; the soul goes with the body. Otherwise, when a discarded human body is lowered into the grave, body and soul go the opposite way. Here the soul goes the same way towards the earth. This is the great cosmic sacrifice of love that the Christ may perform for all earthly existence, because death can no longer prevent him from doing so. The earth receives the body and blood of Christ. It receives the "great communion" because death has no power over him who dies on the cross. Thus a ferment is incorporated into all earthly existence, the medicine of the spiritualisation of all earthly-material existence.“ (Lit.: Bock, p. 357f)

Literature

• Emil Bock: Die drei Jahre, Urachhaus Verlag, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-87838-229-4
• Rudolf Steiner: Erfahrungen des Übersinnlichen. Die drei Wege der Seele zu Christus, GA 143 (1994) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgatha , GA 152 (1990) English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

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