Christ's sufferings or passions, as the Church calls them, reach their climax on ‎the day of His crucifixion. Condemned without guilt, scourged and reviled by ‎the crowd, the Saviour takes the steep road to Golgotha later called "Via ‎Dolorosa". Crucified and chained between two robbers, He prayed with all his ‎might to His Father to forgive His tormentors, because they did not realize what ‎they were doing... These last hours of the earthly life of the Son of God are ‎remembered every year at the services in the temples, in the Gospel readings and ‎Orthodox chants. It is also the saddest day for all believers.‎

‎"Good Friday is the only day of the year in which the Holy Liturgy is not ‎celebrated in any way and there is no Eucharist, that is, the joyous sacrament of ‎the church is not celebrated, because it is the day on which the greatest possible ‎tragedy occurred in the Universe”, explains Father Boris Borisov from the ‎Church of the Holy Transfiguration in Sofia in an interview for Radio Bulgaria's Darina Grigorova. “The creator of the universe, ‎God himself, who came and became incarnate, did only good deeds, healed all ‎the sick. He resurrected the dead three times, at least as described in the Gospel. ‎He was slain by the crown of His creation, man, and He was slain for ‎blasphemy, as a formal cause which the Sanhedrin pointed out. To kill God for ‎blasphemy - that's the paradox.”‎

And as described in the Gospel, when Christ died on the Cross, there was an ‎earthquake, the sun hid its rays, and the temple curtain was torn. ‎‎"All this ‎testifies that the whole creation, together with the inanimate world, is ‎experiencing this universal cataclysm", notes Father Boris. All of nature suffers ‎because of the Saviour's death on the Cross. ‎

In the Middle East, even today Christian Orthodox believers observe how it ‎darkens and thunders every year on Good Friday, regardless of the forecast for ‎the day. ‎

‎"By the way, there are also non-Christian sources that testify that it was really ‎precisely in these years, which we tentatively place around 33 years after Christ, ‎that there really was a solar eclipse, seen from different points of the ancient ‎world”, points out Father Boris. “And the fact that the temple curtain is torn is ‎also symbolic. Yes, it is the saddest day of the year, but it is also the victory over ‎death, because Christ precisely with His death defeated death to give eternal life ‎to all who were in the graves.”‎

In Orthodoxy, there is a concept of "the deification of man" and his ‎sanctification, as the goal of human life. It is based on the Holy Scripture.‎

‎‎"As Saint Athanasius the Great says: "God became man so that man could ‎become God. This is precisely the essence of Christ's redemptive deed. He made ‎it so that we, mere mortals, could be redeemed from the power of death and be ‎able to partake of God himself. May God's vision and direct communion be ‎available to us."‎

This symbolism is depicted in Orthodox churches through the dome, where ‎Christ the Almighty is painted. He descends from heaven to earth, thanks to the ‎Mother of God depicted on the altar apse.‎

Photos: Darina Grigorova