Good Friday is the day of the Cross. The Church gathers not in Mass but in the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion — the reading of the Passion according to John, the solemn intercessions, the veneration of the Cross, and communion from the reserved sacrament. It is the only day of the year when no Mass is celebrated.
The Way of the Cross — the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem — follows the path tradition gives to Christ's walk from Pilate's praetorium to Calvary. The fourteen Stations, formalized by the Franciscans in the 14th century, trace the events from condemnation to entombment. The route ends in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over both the rock of Calvary and the tomb from which Christ rose. Pilgrims have walked these stations in Jerusalem since at least the fourth century, and the devotion was exported so that any church could become a local Jerusalem.
The Stations spread to every Catholic church in the world. At Santiago de Compostela, at Lourdes, at Walsingham, and in countless parish churches, the faithful walk the Stations on Good Friday — and on every Friday of Lent — as a pilgrimage in miniature, joining their own suffering to Christ's.
