For Christians, this is the most significant period in a religious life that revolves around the rising from the dead of the Lord and Saviour of the religion, Jesus Christ. The account of the Son of the Father dying on the cross to offer humankind a lifeline into the future is familiar. If the remains of the Christ stayed in the tomb in which He was buried, then the faith of the fathers would be worthless and in vain. But the Christian theology and believers around the world attest to the Saviour rising from the dead to atone for the sins of mankind; He literally came to save mankind and pay for his/her sins. By morning light, even in the half dark, believers here and those wherever Christendom has gone to, have been re-enacting something approximating the suffering undergone by the Christ, dragging their own crosses up their personal Calvary hills.
It is known that in parts of the world, groups of Christians, determined to take their faith very seriously, carry their identification with their Saviour to extremes of behaviour. Having themselves nailed to crosses, beaten with the stripes of their faith; others, having subjected themselves to the most rigorous self-discipline over the period of Lent, begin their return to something approaching normal life patterns after today's Good Friday services and other religious rituals. But before the celebration of the risen Christ, paradoxically, believers today attempt to share in the pain and suffering of their Saviour, expecting to benefit from their long days and hours of prayer. It is a principle that the whole population needs to share in, even those who do not subscribe to the Christian faith, that being that sacrifice, penance and devotion to a set of principles and life patterns larger than ourselves are foundation stones of eventual success and blessings.
These are values and mores which run in direct contradiction to modern-day lifestyles where instant and self-gratification are all that matters. The Christian faith, like all of the great religions followed by mankind, also requires its followers to uplift the spiritual above the material. Man cannot live by bread alone is one of the most quoted injunctions of the faith. That is yet another principle which we living in this post-modern world do not always pay attention to. Instead we take great delight in material possessions and judge our fellow men on how much of the material they are able to gather. And on such a basis we judge the success of the individual, the family, the institution, the country. Indeed, we are wont to talk about the achievement of a civilisation taking into consideration only the material wealth that it has been able to store up.
In contradiction, the Christian philosophy on life warns against those who would gather and accumulate in their great storehouses the wealth of the era.
While we are out today engaging in the practice of beating the Good Friday bobolee, we need to be charitable. And this is in particular reference to our public figures. Such people know and expect that when they come into public life in this very open manner they become subject to rough treatment. Nevertheless, we need not make of them public enemies. Again in the tradition of the Christian faith we should remember that God did not seek revenge on us for our sins, but rather opened a way for us all.