Good Friday is the centre of the Christian year and the most solemn day in the liturgical calendar. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer appoints not one but three Collects for this day — a unique provision that signals its gravity and breadth. The first Collect is for the family of God, gathered in penitence before the Cross; the second intercedes for all estates of men throughout the Church; the third reaches even to those who do not yet believe. On Good Friday, the Church prays for all humanity, because on this day Christ died for all.

The appointed Epistle from the Letter to the Hebrews sets the Crucifixion within the theology of sacrifice. The Law appointed year after year the blood of bulls and goats as a covering for sin, but these sacrifices could never take away sin — they were a shadow of the good things to come. Christ, coming as the great High Priest, offered himself once for all through the eternal Spirit, a perfect and unrepeatable sacrifice that has opened the way into the holy of holies for all who draw near by faith.

The appointed Gospel is the Passion according to Saint John: the arrest in the garden, the trial before the high priest and before Pilate, the crucifixion at Golgotha, and the burial. John presents our Lord as one who goes to the Cross in sovereign freedom: no man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. Good Friday is not a day of defeat but of victory accomplished through voluntary self-offering.