Good Friday in the hills of Ba

That was the case last year in the five highland villages of Ba. On Wednesday morning, about forty young people started carrying the cross in silence along a 20-mile stretch of tough, parched roads linking their villages. They were accompanied by parish catechists from each village who gave teachings each night on the meaning of Holy Week. Some young people from other Christian denominations also took part.

Having “farewelled” the parishioners of Ba at 6am as they began their own Way of the Cross and knowing that the other section of the parish - the four coastal villages - had also been on the road since 5am, I headed up the hills to Navala to conduct five baptisms and to admit 12 young people into our Sacrament of Confirmation Programme.

By 9am, we were ready to witness the Highland Youths’ rendering of the Passion of St John, which interwove the 14 traditional Stations of the Cross. The life-like shouts of the soldiers and the physical mistreatment of Jesus abruptly brought us back to that day in Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago.

Dressed in uniforms culled from cardboard boxes, with a few wearing Fijian Army fatigues, they pushed Jesus up the hill of the village, where he met his mother and the weeping women, fell down and stood up again three times, was helped briefly by Simon of Cyrene, and was finally divested of his clothes right down to his undergarment, at which point he was hoisted over the village on a cross.

So realistic was it that at one point, I had to make sure the nail hammering was not an actual crucifixion. Nevertheless, the young man portraying Jesus had to squeeze his legs between two narrow slats, which was very painful for him, but he did it. After “death”, he was taken down from the Cross into the arms of his mother, from whom the soldiers took the body and carried it into the sacristy for “burial”.

Rather than all adjourn to wait for the liturgical Service of the Passion at three o’clock, I asked that we keep going. In place of individual confessions, a service of communal repentance was led by the catechists. Villagers had written down their sins and watched as they went up in flames before the altar.

The Liturgy of the Word followed, and I decided to let the young people, who had learned their parts off by heart in their drama, also conduct the proclamation of the Gospel - through the same Jesus, Peter, Pilate, crowd, etc.

This was a powerful “retake” of what we had already seen. My homily noted that while the Stations of the Cross (and the other three Gospel writers) emphasise Jesus’ physical suffering on Good Friday, the Gospel of John poses some awkward questions for us: Who is Jesus for you? Do you (like Peter and the others) also deny knowing him when the chips are down? Who is really on trial here - Jesus, Pilate, or you? What King (meaning power structure) do you choose to follow in your life? Is it based on violence, patronage, and the size of one’s army, or is it one whose only weapons are integrity and truth?

Two young men then held up two crosses for the rite of veneration, and we ended with Communion, which was returned to the house in the village where it had “slept” the previous night. After the Liturgy, we retired to drink kava, which lasted until exactly 3pm, at which time the village fell silent to mark the hour of Jesus’ death. Afterwards, we had lunch together.

Last year’s “Day of the Dead”, or Good Friday, remained in my memory for many days. I continue to marvel at the ingenuity of the Fijian people, particularly the young people, in taking this story to themselves and presenting it in a way that shakes one’s liturgical niceties, returning it to the physical, messy, and ultimately loving day that it was. So realistic was it that at one point, I had to make sure the nail hammering was not an actual crucifixion.

Columban Fr Pat Colgan, former parish priest in Ba, Fiji.

Related links

• Read more from The Far East - March/April 2025