Good Friday
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Good Friday at my parish consists of three parts: a performance of His Last Days by Dallas Holmes, the stations of the cross, and the Good Friday service (including veneration of the cross). This year I skipped His Last Days for various reasons that I won’t discuss here. I also hardly go to the stations (last year I did, but only because I was pressed into service to sing).
The Good Friday service itself is obviously a sombre event. This is not a Mass, though there is communion (using the hosts consecrated the day before). The music is very low-key and there is always a complete reading of the Passion According to St John (the other three Passion readings are rotated in the three-week cycle of Palm/Passion Sunday readings). It is meant to be celebrated at or around 3 p.m. in keeping with the traditional time of Jesus’ death.
Immediately after the Passion reading, there is the veneration of the cross. Because so many people choose to come to this service at my parish (nearly 400 this year), veneration is done in a manner akin to communion. The choir is singing an appropriate song for the occasion and the congregation files down the center aisle to venerate the cross in whatever manner they feel is appropriate. Some will kiss the cross, some merely touch it, some choose to embrace it in a tasteful manner and others will merely bow or genuflect before the cross.
There is never music for the processional nor the recessional. Those are done in silence. It is such a sombre event that when the priests and deacons come to the front of church, they will prostrate themselves on the ground instead of merely bowing to the altar. The entire congregation will kneel behind them in silent prayer. It can be an intensely powerful moment.
Good Friday is meant to focus our attention on the Lord’s death and burial. The resurrection comes later. It is probably the holiest moment in the modern Catholic Church, because it acknowledges the Catholic belief of a God’s willingness to become human and die the same death we (and indeed a worse death than most) experience.
I’ll leave the theological and spiritual arguments over whether or not you believe such a thing as an exercise for the readers. All persons are welcomed here. 
