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What happens in church on Good Friday? That would be an ecumenical matter | Letters

Rev Canon Michael Ainsworth and Nigel Eifion Rogers Hartley continue a conversation on communion. Alan Gough says any bank holiday is a feast dayCanon John Longuet-Higgins oversimplifies on the matter of Good Friday (Letters, 12 August). How to handle this (yes, non-feast) day, liturgically? Some, indeed, say no communion. Other traditions say that on this day of all days – the day of the cross – there should be a full service of holy communion. And others follow the pattern of receiving communion from the “pre-sanctified” – that is, bread and wine consecrated the previous day, at the “Last Supper” eucharist, and “reserved” and simply shared the next day, as a sign that Christ’s offering at the supper and on the cross was one and the same – his whole self.Rev Canon Michael AinsworthManchester• Sorry to be pedantic, but from an ecumenical point of view Canon John Longuet-Higgins is not correct, for not only do Catholics receive holy communion on Good Friday, but so also do high church Anglo-Catholics of his own church as a pinnacle point of the Easter Triduum. Of all days in the Christian year it would seem the most appropriate moment to receive the blessed sacrament of Christ’s body and blood poured forth as the key moment in Christian salvation history.Nigel Eifion Rogers HartleyWorkington, Cumbria Continue reading...

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