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PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 3/29/2002 6:38 PM (GMT -6)

From:
http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Orthodox-Faith/Worship/Holy-Saturday.html

Holy Saturday

The first service belonging to Holy Saturday -- called in the Church the
Blessed Sabbath -- is the Vespers of Good Friday. It is usually celebrated
in the mid-afternoon to commemorate the burial of Jesus.

Before the service begins, a "tomb" is erected in the middle of the church
building and is decorated with flowers. Also a special icon which is painted
on cloth (in Greek, epitaphios; in Slavonic, plaschanitsa) depicting the dead
Saviour is placed on the altar table. In English this icon is often called the
winding-sheet.

Vespers begin as usual with hymns about the suffering and death of Christ.
After the entrance with the Gospel Book and the singing of Gladsome Light,
selections from Exodus, Job, and Isaiah 52 are read. An epistle reading from
First Corinthians (1:18-31) is added, and the Gospel is read once more with
selections from each of the four accounts of Christ's crucifixion and burial.
The prokeimena and alleluia verses are psalm lines, heard often already in
the Good Friday services, prophetic in their meaning:

After more hymns glorifying the death of Christ, while the choir sings the
dismissal song of St Simeon, the priest vests fully in his dark-colored robes
and incenses the winding-sheet which still lies upon the altar table. Then,
after the Our Father, while the people sing the troparion of the day, the
priest circles the altar table with the winding-sheet carried above his head
and places it into the tomb for veneration by the faithful.

The Matins of Holy Saturday are usually celebrated on Friday night. They begin
in the normal way with the singing of God is the Lord, the troparion The Noble
Joseph, and the following troparia:

In place of the regular psalm reading the entire Psalm 119 is read with a verse
praising the dead Saviour chanted between each of its lines. This particular
psalm is the verbal icon of Jesus, the righteous man whose life is in the hands
of God and who, therefore, cannot remain dead. The Praises, as the verses are
called, glorify God as "the Resurrection and the Life," and marvel at his
humble condescension into death.

There is in the person of Jesus Christ the perfect unification of the perfect
love of man toward God and the perfect love of God toward man. It is this
divine human love which is contemplated and praised over the tomb of the
Savior. As the reading progresses the Praises become shorter, and gradually
more concentrated on the final victory of the Lord, thus coming to their proper
conclusion:

After the final glorification of the Trinity, the church building is lighted
and the first announcement of the women coming to the tomb resounds through the
congregation as the celebrant censes the entire church. Here for the first time
comes the clear proclamation of the good news of salvation in Christ's
resurrection.

The canon song of Matins continues to praise Christ's victory over death by
his own death, and uses each of the Old Testamental canticles as a
prefigurative image of man's final salvation through Jesus. Here for the first
time there emerges the indication that this Sabbath this particular Saturday
on which Christ lay dead -- is truly the most blessed seventh day that ever
existed. This is the day when Christ rests from his work of recreating the
world. This is the day when the Word of God "through whom all things were
made" (Jn 1:3) rests as a dead man in the grave, saving the world of his own creation and opening the graves:

Again, the canon ends on the final note of the victory of Christ.

As more verses of praise are sung, the celebrant again vests fully in his
somber vestments and, as the great doxology is chanted, he once more censes
the tomb of the Savior. Then, while the congregation with lighted candles
continually repeats the song of the Thrice Holy, the faithful -- led by their
pastor carrying the Gospel Book with the winding-sheet of Christ held over
his head -- go in procession around the outside of the church building. This
procession bears witness to the total victory of Christ over the
powers of darkness and death. The whole universe is cleansed, redeemed
and re stored by the entrance of the Life of the World into death.

As the procession returns to the church building, the troparia are sung once
again, and the prophecy of Ezekiel about the "dry bones" of Israel is chanted
with great solemnity:

With the victorious lines of the psalms calling God to arise, to lift up his
hands, to scatter his enemies and to let the righteous rejoice; and with the
repeated singing of Alleluia, the letter of the Apostle Paul to the
Corinthians is read: "Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed"
(1 Cor 5:6-8). The Gospel about the sealing of the tomb is read once more,
and the service is ended with intercession and benediction.

The Vespers and Matins of the Blessed Sabbath, together with the Divine
Liturgy which follows, form a masterpiece of the Orthodox liturgical
tradition. These services are not at all a dramatic re-enactment of the
historical death and burial of Christ. Neither are they a kind of ritual
reproduction of scenes of the Gospel. They are, rather, the deepest
spiritual and liturgical penetration into the eternal meaning of the saving
events of Christ, viewed and praised already with the full knowledge of
their divine significance and power.

The Church does not pretend, as it were, that it does not know what will
happen with the crucified Jesus. It does not sorrow and mourn over the Lord
as if the Church itself were not the very creation which has been produced
from his wounded sides and from the depths of his tomb. All through the
services the victory of Christ is contemplated and the resurrection is
proclaimed. For it is indeed only in the light of the victorious resurrection
that the deepest divine and eternal meaning of the events of Christ's passion
and death can be genuinely grasped, adequately appreciated and properly
glorified and praised.

On Holy Saturday itself, Vespers are served with the Divine Liturgy of St Basil
the Great. This service already belongs to the Passover Sunday. It begins in
the normal way with the evening psalm, the litany, the hymns following the
evening Psalm 141 and the entrance with the singing of the vesperal hymn,
Gladsome Light. The celebrant stands at the tomb in which lies the winding-
sheet with the image of the Savior in the sleep of death.

Following the evening entrance which is made with the Book of the Gospels,
fifteen readings from the Old Testament scriptures are read, all of which
relate to God's work of creation and salvation which has been summed up and
fulfilled in the coming of the predicted Messiah. Besides the readings in
Genesis about creation, and the passover-exodus of the Israelites in the
days of Moses in Exodus, there are selections from the prophecies of Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Zephaniah, and Jonah as well as from Joshua and
the Books of Kings, the Canticles of Moses, and of the Three Youths found in
Daniel are chanted as well. After the Old Testament readings the celebrant
intones the normal liturgical exclamation for the singing of the
Thrice-Holy Hymn, but in its place the baptismal verse from Galatians
is sung: As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Alleluia (Gal 3:27). As usual in the Divine Liturgy the epistle reading
follows at this point. It is the normal baptismal selection of the Orthodox
Church (Rom 6:3-11). If we have been united with him in a death like his we
shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Rom 6:5).

At this time the royal gates are closed, and the celebrants and altar servers
change their robes from the dark vestments of the passion into the bright
vestments of Christ's victory over death. At this time all vestings of the
church appointments are also changed into the color signifying Christ's triumph
over sin, the devil and death. This revesting takes place while the people sing
the verses of Psalm 82: Arise O Lord and judge the earth, for to Thee belong
all the nations.

After the solemn chanting of the psalm verses, to which are often added the
hymn glorifying Christ as the New Passover, the Living Sacrifice who is
slain, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; the celebrants
emerge from the altar to announce over the tomb of Christ the glad tidings of
his victorious triumph over death and his command to the apostles: "Make
disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded. ..." (Mt 28:1.20). This Gospel text is also the reading of the
baptismal ceremony of the Orthodox Church.

The Divine Liturgy then continues in the brilliance of Christ's destruction of
death. The following song replaces the Cherubic Hymn of the offertory:

In place of the Hymn to the Theotokos, the ninth ode of the matinal canon is
sung once again: "Lament not for me, Mother ... for I will arise" (see above).
The communion hymn is the line of the psalm: The Lord awoke as one asleep,
and arose saving us (Ps 78:65)

The Divine Liturgy is fulfilled in the communion with him who lies dead in his
human body, and yet is enthroned eternally with God the Father; the one who,
as the Creator and Life of the World, destroys death by his lifeÄcreating
death. His tomb -- which still stands in the center of the church -- is shown
to be, as the Liturgy calls it: the fountain of our resurrection.

Originally this Liturgy was the Easter baptismal liturgy of Christians. It
remains today as the annual experience for every Christian of his own dying
and rising with the Lord.

Christ lies dead, yet he is alive. He is in the tomb, but already he
is "trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing
life." There is nothing more to do now but to live through the evening of
the Blessed Sabbath on which Christ sleeps, awaiting the midnight hour
when the Day of our Lord will begin to dawn upon us, and the night full
of light will come when we will proclaim with the angel: "He is risen,
he is not here; see the tomb where they laid him" (Mk 16:6).

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 03/30/2002 3:47:13 PM

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