The church of St. Annes, Keighley, was filled up today as hundreds of people came together to take part in the solemn mass for Good Friday, when Jesus died on the cross. The mass was celebrated by Canon Michael McReadie, the parish priest of St. Annes. The one and half hour rite included solemn intercessions and also the veneration of the cross, where everyone came forward to honour the cross by kneeling and kissing the feet of the statue of Jesus Christ

Many enlightening things are passed on and reinforced through discussion. Such a thing is a Homily. For nine or ten minutes after the liturgy of the gospel, we all calmly sit down and reflect on the happenings of our daily lives. In the span of nine or ten minutes, a lot of misconceptions can be cleared, a lot of things can be underlined.  In the homily for this mass, the main theme was very powerful… “The compassion of Jesus is not just theory, it must be practiced”… This point is very important to the lives of every Christian, and Canon McReadie expressed it thoroughly in his speech. Also, he underscored the fact that whatever you do, you will always need hope in order to achieve anything. This was explained through an inspiring anecdote of a church that was attacked by ISIS, which destroyed every religious figure in the church, except for the lone cross, which was unharmed.

The church itself was unusually plain, due to the multitude of purple cloths covering each statue and image until they are removed at Easter. The tabernacle was vacated and the blessed Eucharist was moved to another location in order to place the cross that was used in the service.  After the service, preparations were immediately started to ready the church for the celebration of Easter.