Great and Holy Friday

For the Byzantine Orthodox, today is Great and Holy Friday, marking the execution of our Lord upon the cross.

"And the earth quakes in its pain, to behold its Creator slain."

So sings a contemporary [Orthodox] Christian music group called Kerygma, paraphrasing a line from one of the Byzantine Rite services for today.

For those of us using the Gregorian or the Revised Julian calendar, in both East and West, it is also the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, traditionally regarded as the author of the Gospel which bears his name (written perhaps to record the memories of his mentor, St. Peter) and the founder of the Church of Alexandria.