Bright Friday.
Bright Week. No fasting or abstention from foods.
Acts 3:1-8; John 2:12-22
Read John 2:12-22
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
The Gospel of John, which we read liturgically during the Paschal season, emphasizes the dogmatic fact Jesus Christ is the Word of God and the Second Person in the Holy Trinity. The Word of God who came to redeem the world through incarnation, his death on the cross and resurrection. By his death we mean that he allowed his soul to leave his body. That his soul went into the place of the of the dead—Hades in Greek or Sheol in Hebrew. His body lay uncorrupted—that is untouched by corruption—in the grave. Then on the third day his soul returned to his body. All of this was done willingly, with intention, control and great power. Nothing that happened to Jesus was accidental or forced on him without his blessing and consent. This he did to fill all things with himself, to unite fully with his dead bride—humanity—and to free humanity from the curse of sin, death and the devil. His resurrection is a sign of his Divine and eternal authority. The temple, his body, which the Jews destroyed he raised it up again in three days.
St. Hilary of Poitiers says, “by the power to take his soul again and to raise the temple up, he declares himself God and the resurrection his own work: yet he refers all to the authority of his Father’s command. This is not contrary to the meaning of the apostle, when he proclaims Christ, the ‘power of God and the wisdom of God,’ thus referring all the magnificence of his work to the glory of the Father. For whatever Christ does, the power and the wisdom of God does. … Christ was raised from the dead by the working of God, for he himself worked the works of God the Father with a nature indistinguishable from God’s. And our faith in the resurrection rests on the God who raised Christ from the dead. (On The Trinity 9.12.34)