This Good Friday Liturgy invokes all of our senses to meet our Beloved Christ. The service consists of three major parts:
1. Scripture Readings (our listening and our minds)
2. Praying around the Cross (our touch and our hearts)
3. Holy Communion (our taste and our hunger)
We begin the liturgy in silence. In humility and solidarity, the congregation is invited to surrender to God of Love in face of chaos and violence.
We then continue with the Liturgy of the Word. We recount and reflect on our Lord’s Passion through the reading of holy scripture, meditative music and preaching.
The liturgy continues with a reflection of the Cross. Afterwards you are invited to enter into the Liturgy of Praying around the Icon Cross of the Taizé Community. The ecumenical community of Taizé in France was founded with the hope to be a sign of reconciliation between divided Christians and between separated peoples. The Community gathers and reaches out to young people from all around the world and calls them to pray together for trust, peace and reconciliation. Every Friday night at Taizé, the Icon Cross is placed flat on the floor of the Church of Reconciliation. All present are invited to come forward to the cross. As a gesture of their solidarity with the poor and oppressed peoples of the world, pilgrims place their foreheads on the Cross and remain there for a few moments. This symbolic gesture brings home very clearly that Christ still suffers in the downtrodden and victims of injustice in the world today. Through the liturgy, people come in touch with their own brokenness and pain and find it in their hearts to forgive both themselves and others. They become very much aware of the fact that the sufferings of Christ, as an act of total love, are for them personally, as well as for the rest of humankind. The Spirit of God enables people to seek repentance and healing and to know deep within themselves that they are indeed loved.
You are all invited to come and place your foreheads on the cross on which hung the Saviour of our world. Come as the Holy Spirit guides and moves you. Come as yourself, a sinning beloved and may the love of Christ transform you.
The service concludes with Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament consecrated on Maundy Thursday. In partaking, you are invited to enter into sacramental union with Jesus the Victim of the Cross. By so entering into His passion and death, we are carried along to the glory of His resurrection. After the final hymn following Holy Communion, the congregation departs in silence.