I want to thank everyone who is able to be here and pray with us on this good Friday.

At this time, after this, we have intercessions, which are prayers for the church throughout

the world, and pray for our local communities, our families, people who believe in Christ,

people who don't believe in Christ, people who don't believe in God.

We'll pray for everybody in a bit.

And then we're going to have the veneration of the cross.

We just heard the gospel proclaimed of the love of God for us.

So if you have those crosses in your homes, during that time where we venerate the cross,

here my invitation is that you just kind of get yourselves prepared and prepare yourselves

to venerate the cross.

I was thinking about that term, like to be prepared.

Actually, I was thinking about this on Wednesday night, I was talking with a group of teens,

and they said, how do you prepare for the triton?

And it was one of those kind of things that I had this sense of, like, I don't know.

I mean, at this point, you're not...

At this point, you haven't prepared.

If you have this point, you haven't used lent to be prepared.

I'm not sure how you can get prepared tonight, because I cramming for a test.

Like, maybe a little bit can change, but there's only so much you can do.

There's something about being prepared that is the long game.

It's not just the short thing.

At the same time, we recognize that I was thinking, how do you prepare for a good Friday?

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