Catholic Activity: Good Friday in the Home with the Trapp Family

Maria Augusta Trapp describes the beautiful manner in which her family observes Good Friday.

DIRECTIONS

Good Friday is a very quiet day with us. There is little to do in the kitchen, since fasting is observed rigorously on this day. We have no breakfast, and all that is served for lunch, on a bare table without tablecloth, is one pot of thick soup, Einbrennsuppe, which everyone eats standing up in silence. There is little noise around the house. Talking is restricted to the bare essentials, as it would be if a dearly beloved were lying dead in the house. As we are so privileged as to have a chapel in our house, we use the day when the holy house of God is empty and desolate to clean and polish all the sacred vessels and chalices and the ciborium, the monstrance, candlesticks, and censer.

The vigil light before the picture of the Blessed Mother in the living room is also extinguished, because on Good Friday Christ, the Light of the World, is dead.

From twelve until three, the hours of Our Lord's agony on the cross, all activity stops. We sit together in the empty chapel before the cross and spend these hours in prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading. From time to time we rise and sing one or the other of the beautiful Lenten hymns and motets.

Activity Source: Around the Year with the Trapp Family by Maria Augusta Trapp, Pantheon Books Inc., New York, New York, 1955