America's Mayor Live (900): Good Friday—a Solemn Commemoration of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ
Rudy Giuliani reflects on Good Friday services in Palm Beach, contrasting Bach's St. John Passion with the St. Matthew Passion while debating Synoptic Gospel origins. He details the solemn Catholic observance, noting red vestments for blood and the "INRI" inscription mocking Jesus as King of the Jews, alongside news of a Gulf of Hormuz jet crash, Trump's NATO threats, and Major Scott Smiley's historic blindness. Ultimately, Giuliani frames the crucifixion as a sacrificial deliverance from sin, concluding with prayers for God, the President, and America before attending St. Edward's Church. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Bach's Easter Masterpiece00:05:34
Welcome to America's Mayor Live on Good Friday 2026.
Behind me is the Vatican and Ted, and my granddaughter Grace and my daughter Laura Z, the Good Friday services here in Palm Beach.
We are showing you.
The very beginning of the greatest piece of music, in my opinion, written about Easter by a Lutheran and maybe one of the greatest composers of ever, ever, ever, all time, Johann Sebastian Bach.
This is the St. John Passion.
The reason I'm playing that is that's the Passion read today in the Good Friday services, also about Kristen and Roman Catholicism, the Anglican Episcopal faith, it was a Lutheran faith, quite obviously.
I don't know for sure, but I think the Methodist and Presbyterian.
Beyond that, I wouldn't be positive as to what is eased.
The two best passions are Matthew and John.
Matthew, the most complete, largely because arguably he was the closest in time to Jesus.
John, the furthest in time, but the most poetic.
The first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are considered very similar, and therefore they're given a name called the Synoptic Gospel, the theory being that they borrowed from each other.
Historically, it's always been believed they borrowed from Matthew as the first Gospel written.
Now, there's a thought that maybe Mark was written first, and they borrowed from Mark.
If Matthew wasn't written first, Matthew was available first.
Because it looked to the scholars a lot more like Mark borrowed from Matthew than Matthew borrowed from Mark, because Matthew is longer and Mark at various places makes certain abbreviations.
So we can write a slightly more abbreviated version that might be more desirable to people not wanting to spend as much time as Matthew wanted them to spend.
Now, this is, of course, some may think rather petty arguing, but when you're discussing as close you can get, To the truth of the provenance of the Word of God, how could it be anything other than some of the most exciting debating that you can have?
These are the kinds of debates that take place in monasteries.
Good Friday is the critical feast day of the Catholic and Christian religions.
Easter is considered the most glorious of them.
Christmas may be the most necessary because none of it could have happened without Jesus being born.
It would not have happened other than Jesus dying.
And the resurrection from the dead is the culmination to prove victory over death.
That's, again, the St. Matthew's Passion, written by St. Matthew for the Church of Leipzig.
Their practice was to celebrate the service on Easter, on Good Friday, with an oratorio, usually in the evening after the services were over.
And in the days that Matthew wrote this, the service of the Lutheran church would have been fairly close to the service of the Roman Catholic church, which will start in most churches.
And we're in different time zones.
But for me, When I finish this, we will be going to St. Edward's Church in Palm Beach, and they will have started the Stations of the Cross at two o'clock.
And then at three, they will do the Mass or the service.
There are two days, there are two days in the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church when they do not consecrate communion, where the priest does not say Mass and consecrate the body and the bread and water, bread and wine is the body and blood of Christ.
One day is today.
He will use for communion today.
That the communions that were consecrated last night during the Holy Thursday service will be distributed today at some point during the Good Friday service.
Today is a service, not a mass, very rare for the Catholic Church to have a service, but not a mass.
There will be no consecration by the priest, and it will be a service remembering Palm, remembering well from Palm Sunday to now today.
And today is the celebration.
The Crucifixion Celebration00:07:19
And I'll tell you why that's an appropriate word in a moment of the crucifixion, the torture, the incredible pain suffered, and then the final death by nails driven into his hands of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
It's a celebration because without this, the world could not have been delivered from sin.
And the world would not have had the sign.
Necessary to bring them all to God and to the right way of life.
And when you think of how prolific that sign is, that cross, Ted, you want to get us the one back there?
That's probably the most traumatic one.
And here is a version that I think, for me, I selected this myself because I guess being a Catholic that is of Italian extraction, I am always attracted to crucifixions.
And crucifixes that are quite dramatic and, and even in some cases, maybe more stark than this.
This, this, I don't know if you can see it, I find this one quite beautiful because you can see the pain on the face of Jesus.
It looks quite a bit like the version you would have seen in Gibson's Passion, which we haven't seen yet the version done by the Chosen, which will be coming out a little later this year.
The Passion at the time was both praised and criticized because of the realistic nature of the.
Persecution of Jesus.
And not so much the crucifixion, but the buildup to it, the scourge, scourging, and the placement of the thorns, the crown of thorns, and the head of Jesus mocking him as the king of the Jews.
Now, what's missing from this crucifix, which I just noticed, maybe we've got to send it back, Ted.
We've got to build one ourselves, is of course the inscription on the top here by the Romans, king of the Jews, I N R I. Why?
Because the I substituted for the J for King of the Jews.
And of course, the last letter is Rex, R.
I and R, third to last letter, R I. Maybe King of Israel.
He named himself King of Israel, is one of the thousands of ways you could translate the Latin.
And when you deal with the crucifixion, you deal with many different languages.
They put the inscription on the top as mocking him.
And I think that was a choice of the Romans to put that up there, making fun of the Jews because there were in the crowd Jews that called for his crucifixion as a fake Messiah and Jews demanding that he not be crucified because he was the Messiah.
So the Romans said, okay, you want to kill your king?
Yeah, and they put it up there, right across here.
You see that on most of the crucifixes, don't you?
In fact, we're going to show them later.
So we're watching something that is 600 plus six, I'm sorry, 1,600 to 700 years old.
And it will include many, many, many things the blessing of the holy water, the prayer to all of the saints, a litany of the saints.
Which is done in chanting, it's quite beautiful.
The song that they use for it a reading of the gospel according to Saint John, or otherwise known as the Passion of Saint John.
Remember, on Holy Thursday, we read the Passion of Saint Matthew.
Today, we read the Passion of Saint John, which is a different Passion to a very large extent.
Quite notably, Saint John leaves out the Last Supper.
A lot of scholarship on that.
John will quite sort of.
Quite often, he refers to himself in his own gospel as the favorite of Jesus Christ.
And his favorite disciple reached the tomb slightly before Simon Peter.
He and Simon Peter ran to the tomb when the ladies informed them that Jesus had risen from the dead.
And Simon and John ran.
I think John may even make reference to the fact that he could run fast.
He's a kid, right?
He really sounds like a kid.
And then he said, and he arrived at the tomb first, and he was the first to see Jesus.
But he defers to Peter, his elder and his boss, right?
And waits to make sure Jesus is not there until Peter does it first.
Or could it be that John, being a young guy, is kind of scared, and he's got to rely on tough old Peter to take care of him, remember?
Peter is coming off right now, having chopped the ear off a Roman soldier, his master putting it back on, and then after bragging about the fact that he wouldn't do it, denying Christ three times.
When people outside, while Jesus is being questioned, say, Oh, weren't you with that guy that says he's the Messiah?
Oh, I remember you.
You were with him.
No, no.
And then.
The cock crows.
I got to have grace here.
Cock.
Well, the cock crows.
And then the third time, a lady comes up, and he really now denies it and recognizes and remembers that surely before that evening, Jesus had predicted it and runs away.
In fact, all of the disciples run away, with, of course, the exception of his favorite, John.
He turns.
John into his mother's companion and protector with one of the seven words from the cross being, Man, behold thy mother, Mother, behold thy son.
And he points to both of them.
One of the ceremonies used often as an alternative to the Station of the Cross, which will happen before the expiration of the three-hour quiet period, which is the Hours now, 12 to 3, would be the stations of the cross, might be the seven last words of Christ, which is another devotion that's used.
Red for Good Friday00:03:08
But once we reach 3 o'clock, which traditionally is the time that Jesus expired and therefore is dead, it is then the time that the modified service, like a mass, short of consecration, because that was done the night before.
Will take place.
And then people will be given communion and they will be asked to leave the church, and the churches will remain open for the full period of time now until the resurrection on Sunday morning.
And all of the statues in the church are covered in purple.
The crucifix, this crucifix here, to the extent that it's in the church, the crucifix is covered in purple, and that'll all be removed for the Saturday night Easter.
Easter Vigil.
Good Friday service.
Priest wearing red denotes blood.
I mean, even 10 years ago, it was black.
And that can still be used in certain churches.
Or you can use white also.
But this is a distinction from the usual color of Lent, which is purple.
Palm Sunday can be done in a glorious color of gold or white or red.
Good Friday can be done in red to denote blood rather than death.
To Sunday, of course, is done in beautiful white.
So those are parts of the services.
So in Rome, they're probably now doing the nighttime service.
And there you see the.
Highest official of the Roman Catholic Church, the vicar of Christ and the representative of Christ on earth, prostrating himself on the ground to express the sorrow and the tragedy of the loss of Jesus Christ, the memorial of it.
He also, last night, washed the feet of many of the priests as a reminder of Jesus doing that right during the Last Supper.
It is, in fact, in the Gospel of St. John that that service is emphasized over the actual creation of the Eucharist.
In most of the passions, the major theme.
Of the holy thursday is the creation of the eucharist.
Now very, very strangely very, very strangely, that is not emphasized in this is this is not emphasized in the passion of of John.
Holy Thursday Eucharist00:15:08
Not emphasized, not mentioned, let's put it that way, not mentioned.
And the passion of John begins as as, as as such.
I can read it either from.
I can read it either from.
I could read it either from the god, from the, from the, from the Bible, or I can read it from from the saint Matthew's passion.
It begins at john 18, 1.
Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden into which he and his disciples entered.
Judas, his betrayer, also knew the place because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.
So Judas Got a band of soldiers and guards from the chief priests and the Pharisees and went there with listeners, torches, and weapons.
Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him, went out and said to them, to the soldiers, Whom are you looking for?
They answered and said, Jesus the Nazarene.
He said to them, I am.
Judas, his betrayer was also with them.
When he said to them, I am, they turned away and fell to the ground.
So he then asked them, Whom are you looking for?
They said, Jesus the Nazarene.
Jesus answered.
I told you that I am.
So if you are looking for me, let these men go.
Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest's slave, and cut his right ear off.
The slave's name was Malchus.
Jesus said to Peter, Put your sword into its scabbard.
Shall I not drink the cup?
That the father has prepared for me.
So the band of soldiers, the tribune, and the Jewish guards seized Jesus, bound him, and brought him to Anus first.
He was the father in law of Caiaphas, whom the high priest had named this year.
It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews.
That the two, it was better that one man should die rather than the people.
And then, of course, the trial or what passed for a trial of our Lord and Savior.
Tonight, there's no consecration of wine.
It was consecrated already.
There is going to be a veteran, there'll be a veneration of the cross.
It's very, very strange and very deep and very important.
And I hope when we're finished, you spend some more time on it.
Let's then use some of our time today.
And today we're going to do it without commercial break.
I just don't know.
I debated whether to have a show on Good Friday.
Lindell TV cancels it for Good Friday.
Mike is quite religious, and everyone on the show is.
And I am too.
But I do think we're performing something.
Oh, you know, you have to communicate with God and pray and ask.
And I, please don't think this is terribly arrogant.
I don't think it is.
I think God wants us to do this show.
When I say God, I communicate with Jesus.
Does he answer me?
Not directly.
Do I obtain a feeling at times of what his will is?
I do.
I do.
And even when I don't obtain a feeling, my logical mind will suggest what his answer would have been.
It's always much better when I, my logical mind develops it and I can feel, I can get a feeling of completion, which is why I urge a prayer.
Use the Hollow app if you want.
It is very, very helpful.
It was very helpful for the 40-day devotions during Lent, which are about to come to an end.
Hopefully that will put you into the.
Into the process of praying every day.
It can be five minutes.
It can be 10.
If you have children, you surely, surely should do it.
It gets them into the habit of doing it.
It teaches them to communicate with Jesus as a friend.
I attribute that to my father and my mother, and I attribute that to the priests and the priests, the brothers and the nuns of the Roman Catholic Church.
U.S. Army Major Scott Smiley paid a high price serving our nation.
Scott was leading his platoon in Iraq when a blast sent shrapnel through his eyes, leaving him blind and temporarily paralyzed.
Scott would become the first blind active duty military officer before medically retiring years later.
Thanks to friends like you.
Welcome back.
Now, I did say we weren't going to do an ad.
I should have said that I do not consider the ad for Total Towers to be an ad.
What I mean by that is that's a religious.
Act.
It's right before the passion begins.
They ask Jesus for a couple of hints on how to get to heaven, like simplify all those commandments.
And he does it in different gospels in different ways.
But I always thought the best one and the easiest one was to take care of my people.
And if you Refuse those in need.
It was Jesus you were refusing.
But if you were generous enough and kind enough to help those in need, you're going to be very surprised to know you were helping Jesus.
And boy, that's going to count for a lot on the day of the last judgment.
So much of the religion, if not all of it, is directed to taking care of the poor and taking care of the less fortunate than you.
Even not in the area of spiritual wealth, because you are the ones with the truth, the way, and the light.
And Jesus expects you to expand it.
And if you do, you will have followed his word.
Well, we'll conclude with that now on the religious part, but we'll come back to it at the very, very end.
And I'll ask Ted, while we have time, to get me the other crucifix because I need to show you something on that.
So let's go quickly to where we stand.
Okay, we'll do 15 to 20 minutes on the news items and then another 10 minutes on final reflections on Good Friday, and then a few reflections heading toward Easter.
Because we won't be with you on Easter, but we'll do an Easter message, I do think, right?
We'll do it either.
We'll put it out either on Saturday night or we'll put it out on Sunday morning.
Okay.
And who knows what else is going to happen.
What's the situation in the Gulf of Hormuz?
I do think that that is the number one.
Well, the big story, Mayor, right now, and of course we're taping this around the afternoon so we can make it to church.
The big news right now a U.S. fighter jet.
Did go down in Iran.
I did see that, yes.
And there's not a word on the search for one.
One is believed to be.
Well, one crew member has been rescued.
And the search for the second one is ongoing.
Two?
There are two total.
One has been rescued by U.S. Special Forces.
The other is still.
This again, when this is playing, this will be playing tonight.
So there may be further updates.
But as of this early afternoon, U.S. Special Forces has recovered one.
Alive.
Could you detail it?
Where did it take place?
First of all, what aircraft was it?
Trying to get the details here.
Why don't you get that together and I'll move on and we'll come back to that when we have it together.
All right.
So the Gulf of Hormuz right now is, of course, the critical area.
The president made it not directly linked, but he made it as clear as you could that he's not going to leave until the job is done.
Which some of the words that he said in his effort, I think, to confuse the enemy about what he's going to do and not do, suggested that he was thinking a day or two ago about a two week exit, no matter what, and leaving, not by no matter what, achieving all of our objectives, but the opening of the Gulf of Hormuz, which in fact was not one of our early objectives.
At the same time, we didn't scope it out as.
They would do that.
At least I don't think we did.
So this was an add on that you could deal with or not.
And he went back and forth.
I'm going to blow them off the island.
We could take over.
Or how about you guys who benefit from it, who don't help us?
How about you take care of it?
And look, there's a great temptation to do that.
I knew he wouldn't.
He eventually said he's going to do it.
He's going to take care of it.
He's angry.
There's no doubt about it.
And NATO is going to pay a price for this.
I do not believe it will be our leaving NATO.
I think he'll threaten it.
I think he'll think about it.
And I think he won't do it.
It will suggest that we do a lot less for NATO and try very hard to put the pressure on them to do it.
And now, right now, they don't want to do anything.
They want to live off the United States.
Really, with the exception of Germany, most of them are looking at it from they can't afford it point of view.
Germany has added to it that they may not, you know, they may not go along with it.
Two weeks ago, they were going along with it.
The United Arab Emirates is in a great spot to help protect us.
If you look at the map.
If you look at the map of the area around Charge Island, the Arab Sea and the Persian Gulf pushing north to go around the hump, the enclosed projection of rocks that becomes, as you can see, much narrower.
It becomes much narrower right here.
It gets much narrower right here.
It gets much narrower as you get to the Straits.
It becomes 20 miles.
It is bigger elsewhere.
So it's easier to get through.
I wonder if they're going to let some through on this day where they've promised some more open access.
It's about three or four miles off the coast of maybe a little more than that.
No, about three or four miles because it's very narrow.
It's a 20 foot, 20 mile passage.
So it's not that big a passage.
It's not that small a passage.
But it's one that with the right kind of weapons, you can hit very hard.
And we sure as heck don't want that.
We don't want that happening, right?
So.
One of the things that the Arab country, one of the things that Rant has said is part of an agreement will be they want to get paid for our going through there.
Well, this is not a passage that they spent money putting together.
This is not the Suez Canal or some of the other passages that they've done a terrific science job and we should have to pay some of the expense of that.
And just to finish off on Pete Hagsett, he is a great guy.
And there's nothing, nothing that's going to spoil his lifestyle.
I mean, he is a real Christian in that sense.
The Artemis vessel that we had so much coverage of, and my granddaughter Grace had so much fun.
After the show was over, because she got a chance to activate our little mock up here, she wanted more.
So now I think she has developed six different versions of the rocket.
She's been taken off all morning.
Believe me, she's not the only kid that's affected that way.
I use her as an example.
There are a lot of kids whose parents, whose parents are having us, having them watch that tonight because it fits so well into the narrative of a stronger family.
So thank you for doing that.
That Artemis 2 package is our first attempt to get to the moon or first attempt to get that far off in space, further than ever before.
Prayers and Blessings00:07:19
But we're going through the The milestones that were seven years in air will bring new Catholics into the church.
And he also will, it is a day that is put aside for Catholic priests renewing their commitment and vows to obey the bishop.
They'll also, if they are in order, they'll do all of that, plus they'll add other obligations on themselves.
But the obligation that Christ asks you to carry one of those around, carry one of those rosary beads around at all times.
The final moment, the final hour, it can help you.
Speaking of prayers, this is something that is.
That was their relation when the takeoff took place successfully.
We know there have been a few that have led to casualties, and this breaks their heart.
It's like air traffic controllers.
It's very hard for them to.
And we know what forecasts are like, and they can dissect them more fully than we can, but they can't assess the unpredictability of it.
Maybe that's proof of the existence of God, huh?
All these years we can't get it down to a science.
What's happening in Cuba?
The president says, and so do all of our security advisors, including the Secretary of State, who comes from Cuba, by the way, that they're on the verge that six days more, and the best way to do that is to increase their capacity to do that.
They need the equipment.
They need the knowledge.
They need the checklist.
But there'll be plenty of places where they can order any kind of thing that they need.
And the question is, how are they going to get it?
How well stocked is it?
And how long is it going to be?
So when we come back, we'll do a little bit on how I do it.
And then we'll conclude with some of the final thoughts on the master self.
Thank you.
U.S. Army Major Scott Smiley paid a high price serving our nation.
Scott was leading his platoon in Iraq when a blast sent shrapnel through his eyes, leaving him blind and temporarily paralyzed.
Scott would become the first blind active duty military officer before medically retiring years later.
Thanks to friends like you, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation gave Scott and his family a mortgage free, specially adapted smart home.
Show your support for America's heroes.
Welcome back.
America's Mayor Live on this beautiful, beautiful day, which is a very sad day.
Because it is a remembrance of the life of our Lord.
Holy Catholic Church Mass is, in fact, critical.
And it's easier to memorize something than to make it up every time, though, I guess.
The Congress had the reality is that the president, who has been a little, I would say, not his usual transparent self about what he was going to do about the defense budget, has at exactly the right time put out an events budget that no other country in the world could possibly match.
He's going to add a total of 1.5 trillion over a period of time to the defense budget.
And the biggest expenditures he's going to add in right away.
In December of 2020, the difference was 155% goes to that, and the rest goes to the, you know, obviously doesn't, and to other things.
So getting close, we're getting close to the time for the service.
So we have Dr. Maria and Zavilla and Grace ready to go.
Ted and I are going to leave with them, and we're going to wish you a.
very, very holy Good Friday to remember the crucifixion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ to save us from sin and to deliver our world.
We're going to ask you to remember the fears and the trepidation of Holy Saturday when he was dead in the tomb and no one knew what would happen.
And then we're going to ask you to remember, but of course, we'll have a chance to celebrate that.
And that is very early on sunday morning.
The ladies went to the tomb to finish the embalming and when they came to the tomb they found the tomb empty and as they left in fear and confusion, he appeared to them.
God did and said to them, i'm not there anymore.
I conquered death then 40 days on earth, To get his apostles ready to preach across the world the largest and most universal religion ever created in the history of the world, growing even today by large, large numbers.
And before he left, he left them in charge of his church, and he left it in wonderful hands the hands of men who were able to convert by the power of their words.
Not by a sword like Muhammad.
And the power of the words, of course, with the power of the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Would you give me that last crucifix over here?
I'm going to show it to the people as we leave.
Can you reach it?
Ted has to go behind the screen, over the top, around.
Grace, do you think he can make it?
You think he can make it?
And up there, you see I N R I.
It says, mockingly, King of the Jews.
Well, this is the sacrifice made by God for you.
And that's what today represents.
And thank you, dear God.
Thank you, Jesus.
And bless us, all those that we pray for every day.
And the whole world.
God bless our president.
God bless all those nations in jeopardy.
God bless all of us.
Thank you, dear Jesus, for the sacrifice you made for us.