Julie, Judah, Lucy, and I were blessed to spend Easter with my brother and his wife, Ben and Sarah, in Indianapolis. They attend Bethelehem Lutheran. We attended Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Resurrection Sunday services. They were beautiful, majestic, haunting, celebratory. On Holy Saturday, we began outside a dark church around a bonfire, the service led us inside where a moving service, complete with a piano, harp, and clarinet ensemble awaited. We affirmed our baptism - our identification with the death of Jesus. Holy Saturday is the darkest day in the liturgical calendar. Jesus Christ has been crucified and darkness has fallen on all.
Today is Holy Saturday in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The reason it is a month later than in Protestant and Catholic Churches is that the Orthodox follow the Julian calendar rather than the more modern Gregorian calendar.
Here is a short description of this day's significance. This comes from my friends at Saints Constantine and Helen Holy Theophany Church in Colorado Springs.
We celebrate the burial of Christ and His descent into Hell. At Matins, served Friday Evening the Lamentations, or funeral service, of Christ is sung before the Tomb. God in the flesh now observes His Sabbath rest in the tomb, but we look forward to the moment when He will rise again, bringing new life and recreating the world. At the end of the service a procession is made around the church - indicating Christ’s triumphal procession through the darkness of Hell, announcing to Adam His coming Resurrection.
Vesperal Liturgy the morning of Holy Saturday has a strong baptismal character. Three connected themes of Passover, Resurrection, and Baptismal initiation - reflected in the prescribed fifteen OT readings - dominate the service. In the tomb Christ is already triumphant over the gates of Hell; thus the colors change from dark to white at this service in anticipation of His glorious Resurrection for us on earth.
Late this evening we will gather once again in the darkened church for the midnight service of Nocturns. All wait in silence and contemplation for the moment the priest will come out from the sanctuary with a burning candle symbolizing the light of the risen Christ at the very first moment of that glorious Third Day. Then will we cry out the eternal cry of the faithful: Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!
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