LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake Ministerial Association (LMA) is pleased to announce the 23rd annual Community Good Friday Service.

The service will be at noon on Friday, March 29, at St. Mary Immaculate Catholic Church, located at 801 N. Main St. in Lakeport.

Good Friday is the day that Christians commemorate the death of Jesus. This special service will help participants to experience the emotional aspects of the passion story: the betrayal, abandonment, and agony of Jesus.

Throughout history churches, congregations and individual Christians have sought to enhance their understanding of the events that happened on that first Good Friday in a variety of ways.

They have sought to remember the story by reading from missives, reading the Gospel narratives, recalling the last seven sentences Jesus spoke from the cross, and for a privileged few, by traveling to the Holy Land itself and seeking to follow in the footsteps of Jesus as near as one can guess the path based on the Gospel texts.

In the Middle Ages the Franciscans developed a version of the Stations of the Cross for those that could not travel to the Holy Land to walk where Christ walked.

In this practice there are 14 stations, nine of which are taken directly from the gospels and five of which are from the earliest traditions of the church.

The service this year will include a brief reflection on each of these stations and taken collectively will retell the Passion story.

At least seven different churches from Kelseyville and Lakeport will be participating in the service, and everyone in the community is welcome to attend.

In a time of so many divisions it is a joy to have a reason to come together.