04/10/2026
Dear faithful, Blessed Holy Friday!
This afternoon we have the burial vespers at 3 PM; and
Later this evening at 7 PM, we have the Lamentations Service, which is many people's favorite service of the whole year! Come and join us.
My love in Christ,
Fr. Ambrose
The Burial Vespers at 3 PM: Great Vespers of the Blessed Sabbath Great and Holy Friday is the Day of the Cross—a revelation of spiritual darkness in which we see God rejected, yet also a day of redemption, of God’s unsurpassable love for us. The death of Jesus Christ is revealed to us as a saving death and the destruction of death itself by the Divine Love in Christ. At the end of Vespers the Icon of Christ in the life-giving tomb, the Holy Shroud, called the “Plaschanitsa” in Slavonic, or the “Epitaphios” in Greek, is solemnly carried out of the Altar and placed in the center of the Church. We kiss it, giving honor not to the material and paint, but to the One Who gave His life as a ransom to death. The long day of fasting comes to an end with Vespers, and the new Liturgical Day—The Blessed Sabbath— begins. The fast, and therefore, the Vigil, continues.
GREAT AND HOLY SATURDAY: The Blessed Sabbath. We now reach the liturgical center of the Orthodox Church year, a day which leads us from sorrow to joy, from death to life, from prophecy to fulfillment, the day of the destruction of death and the victory of the Cross.
With the end of Holy Friday Vespers on Friday afternoon comes the “Blessed Sabbath,” the Day of Rest, and the revelation of the Life-Giving Tomb of Christ. This is the Day that connects Great Friday with the Resurrection: sorrow is transformed into joy, and so, this is one of the most favored of Holy Week Services. We gather around the “Tomb” in the center of the Church, and like the Theotokos, and the women bearing myrrh, we sing our lamentations— short verses of profound theological depth, interspersed with that most magnificent of hymns, Psalm 118 (119), the longest Psalm in the Bible, which is a pure expression of the love for the law of God, His Will and Providence for mankind, and the very song of the Word of God Himself. When the Lamentations are finished, we continue singing Resurrectional hymns which offer to us the meaning of what the Lord has done and does for us. Near the end of the Service we join in the procession around the Church, holding candles, singing “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.” This is not a “funeral procession,” but a procession of the Son of God, the Holy Immortal One, the Light of Life dispelling the darkness of Hades and death, announcing to “Adam of all generations” the joy of the forthcoming Resurrection. He proclaims that the “dead in the graves will arise.” We re-enter the Church passing under the Shroud. Once within the Church we hear the Prophecy of the Resurrection from Ezekiel 37, the Lessons from Galatians 3:13–14, and I Cor. 5:6, and the reading from Matthew 27:62–66. When Matins has ended, people will take turns reading the Psalms all night long at the Shroud, keeping watch until the next Service on Saturday afternoon.
