North Ogden Today is Good Friday, and an unusual one: it’s also March 25th, the day of the Annunciation, traditionally New Year’s Day by the Catholic calendar. It was believed to be the day God created the world, and hence the day He began it again with the Incarnation; the day of the Passover as well (in Exodus it says that this month should stand at the head of the calendar, hence it was the first month of the year for Christians).
Good Friday fell on March 25th in 2005, but don’t let that make you think it’s a normal occurrence: it won’t happen again this century, and the last time it happened before 2005 was 1932. The most famous concurrence of this sort was the year 1300, when it so impressed Dante that he made it the day the Divine Comedy started.
And so I call this a “Venerdi Dantesco,” and we’ll read some of the Commedia today in his honor. The conjunction of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion and the commencement of Dante’s interior journey seems like a day worth commemorating. Whether the Creation of the World occurred on this day is a bit less certain, but it must have happened sometime, and if anything’s worth celebrating, it’s that.
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