Great and Holy Friday:

The Church Mourns for the Crucified Savior

            We come to church on Friday morning still mourning our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has been nailed unjustly to the Cross. We still see an icon of Christ with arms outstretched on an actual cross in the center of the solea, which we venerated the night before. We still recall the slow, solemn procession that the clergy and altar boys have made around the church, and we became “witnesses” along the path that Jesus took to His Crucifixion. This liturgical procession adapted from this event actually began in the Church of Antioch . The Church of Constantinople (Ecumenical Patriarchate) did not adapt this practice until 1824, and the Slavic (Russian) Churches do not even have a procession in Holy Friday Orthros, celebrated on Thursday evening (Ware, The Lenten Triodion, P. 62). The Antiochian Church thus helped its children understand the pain and suffering our Savior went through simply to destroy sin and save our lives by allowing them to take part in it.

            The first service held in church on Holy Friday morning is that of the Royal Hours. The First, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours are celebrated as part of the daily liturgical cycles in monasteries.

First Hour:      (6:00 A.M.) We rise at the first hour of daylight to pray, asking God to hear us.

Third Hour:     (9:00 A.M.) We remember at the third hour the time of day that Christ sent down the Holy Spirit upon His apostles on Pentecost.

Sixth Hour:     (12:00 Noon) We commemorate the nailing of Christ on the Cross to restore humanity.

Ninth Hour:     (3:00 P.M.) We remember Christ “giving up the spirit” when He tasted death in the flesh.

The Hours Services last about 15 minutes each, and in many places they are combined into one service. However, the Hours take a slightly different form three days of the year, and are thus called “Royal Hours.” These are only celebrated on Holy Friday, Christmas Eve and Epiphany Eve, because their feasts (Pascha, Christmas and Theophany) are considered the three holiest days of the Church year. The Royal Hours come with Psalms, hymns, and three Biblical passages: an Old Testament prophecy, an Epistle reading and a Gospel reading.

The Royal Hours of Pascha call the worshipper to remember the betrayal, the false trial, the scouring, the procession to Golgotha, the Crucifixion, the crown of thorns, the vinegar mixed with hyssop, the piercing of His side with a spear, the cries of agony from the Cross, the horror of the Virgin Mary, the women and John the Evangelist as they never abandoned Christ and witnessed all of this, and even the exact moment when Christ died in the flesh. In the Ninth Hour, we even sing the Fifteenth Antiphon from the Orthros service the night before (“Today He Who hung the earth on the waters is hung on the tree”). This may seem like a repeat of events we have already commemorated, and thus not worth it to make the trip to church to commemorate them again. Nothing could be further from the truth, and for two reasons: as Orthodox Christians, we must always recall these tragic events bearing in mind that Christ, out of His love for us, defeated death so that we can live; and, if for some reason we could not attend Orthros the night before, we have a second chance to participate on Friday morning.

            Great Vespers of the Apokathilosis and Orthros with the Lamentations are served on Holy Friday, though they belong to Holy Saturday. Again, these services have been transferred so that more people can attend. “Apokathilosis” is the Greek word for “un-nailing”, which we celebrate during this service of Great Vespers. The hymns and readings for this day prepare us for this dramatic event that is commemorated liturgically. In “O Lord, I Have Cried”, we sing the verses like “The sun’s light failed and the foundation of the earth was shaken. All things suffered with the Creator of all things.” This recalls the early darkness that fell over the earth and the earthquake that tore the temple in half (Matthew 27:51) when Jesus died on the Cross. We wail with the Virgin Mary at the Savior’s death:

O my Son, where is the beauty of Thy form? I cannot bear to see Thee crucified unjustly. Make haste, then, to arise, so that I too may see Thy Resurrection from the dead on the third day.

This reveals the theme woven throughout all of Holy Week: everything we pray, sing, read and reenact is done in anticipation of the Resurrection. Our services are sorrowful, but they are not depressing. In other words, Holy Week is a week of “joyful sadness” because we know that Jesus will rise on the Third Day to conquer sin and death. We are assured that this is how He will save us in the end. The hymnographers have made it clear—as have all the saints, fathers and mothers over the ages—that the Church cannot have Crucifixion without Resurrection—they are one action.

            The climax of Apokathilosis is the actual “un-nailing” of Christ from the Cross, which takes place during the Gospel reading. The priest stops the Gospel reading to become Joseph of Arimathea. He goes to the solea where the Cross and crucified Christ stand to take Christ down from the Cross.

Then Pilate ordered [the Body] to be given to Joseph. And Joseph took the body, and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the sepulcher (Matthew 27:58-61).

The priest does exactly that, wrapping the figurine of Christ in a white shroud and placing it in the altar. He finishes the Gospel and, moments later, during the Aposticha, the clergy hold another procession around the church, this time carrying the Epitaphion (epitaph) depicting the dead Christ lying in a tomb, arms crossed and eyes closed. We are now in procession with Joseph of Arimathea to that tomb where he will respectfully bury Jesus. The “tomb” is the bier placed on the center of the solea, adorned with flowers and candles. Following the procession and Great Vespers, the clergy and faithful venerate the Epitaphion, the stiff, cloth icon depicting the crucified Savior.

            The “joyful sadness” described earlier best sets the tone for the Orthros with the Lamentations. All along, we know that Christ dies to free us from sin and death. This theme begins during this Orthros in the First Canticle of the Canon.

            The children of those who were once saved concealed under ground the One Who all that time had been concealing the persecuting tyrant under the waves of the sea: So, let us sing to the Lord like the young men, for he is greatly glorified (Sung in Tone Six).

The children are Shedrach, Meshach and Abednago, the “Three Holy Youths” in the Book of Daniel (3:1-57) who concealed that they loved Christ, until they refused to worship the golden idol crafted by King Nebuchadnezzar. Once they acknowledged this to the king, he sent them to die in the furnace. But the Lord delivered them; the same Lord who kept the Devil bound to the underworld and destroyed his power by His descent thereto. We will dwell more on this verse during Holy Saturday.

            After the Canon, we gather around the Bier where Christ lies to sing Lamentations on the occasion of His life-creating death. We lament as did the women who had the courage to stay initially at the tomb after Jesus was buried in the tomb.

Verse 3: Gone the light the world knew, gone the light that was mine; O my Jesus Who art all of the heart’s desire. So the Virgin spoke lamenting at Thy grave.

And we realize why Jesus is gone, for now.

Verse 7: Now we magnify Thee, O Lord Jesus our King, and we venerate Thy passion and burial: for there with hast Thou delivered us from Death.

The Church has blessed us with beautiful melodies to sing the praises and laments of Christ. We are not filled with despair when we sing them so sweetly, but with hope that He will join us again on earth after three days in the tomb.

            Jesus “rested” in the tomb on Holy Saturday, but to be clear, only His body rested, whereas His Divine Spirit fought the devil in Hades. This forms the focus of the Vesperal Divine Liturgy on Saturday morning. And so we come to another famous hymn on this occasion, sung right before the Great Doxology and the procession outside the church.

Great Moses mystically prefigured this present day saying: So God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it (Genesis 2:3). For this is the blessed Sabbath, the day of rest, on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all His works. Through the dispensation of death, He observed the Sabbath in the flesh. Through His Resurrection, He returned to what He was, and in His goodness and love for mankind bestowed upon us eternal life.

We return to the story of Creation as told in Genesis, authored by the Great Moses. Jesus observed the Sabbath Day as a day for bodily rest and spiritual nourishment, as instructed in the Fourth Commandment. So, as His Body rested, His Spirit worked to nourish and purify ours. After this descent into Hades, Jesus returned to earth as what He was before: fully God and fully Man.

            The Church then processes around the outside of the building, led by the altar boys, the adults carrying the Bier on which the Epitaphios of slain Christ lies, followed by the clergy and all the faithful. Each of our processions during Holy Week has a meaning, and this one in Lamentations Orthros is no exception. We are now leaving the world with Christ Who is now descending into the underworld to defeat Satan, Hades, sin, death and everything we know that is evil. We finally mark our descent with Christ when we return inside the church, come down the center aisle and walk underneath the Bier, coming out on the other side back into the world made new by the Resurrection. We also remember, one more time, how Joseph of Arimathea pleaded with Pontius Pilate for Christ’s holy body so that he can bury it properly, as the following hymn explains.

+ Give me that Stranger, murdered in hatred by His own people as a stranger.

+ Give me that Stranger, at Whom I wonder, seeing Him as a guest of death.

+ Give me that Stranger, Who knows how to take in the poor and the strangers.

And it was this “Stranger” (Christ, Whom the world never properly knew or understood) Who, in the Prophecy of Ezekiel, will restore flesh and life to bones of all that have died, which will happen on the Day of Judgment.

Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel . They say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Behold, O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you back to the land of Israel . Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I open thy graves, O my people, and bring you up from your graves. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,’ says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:11-14)

We know, once and for all, that we will rise again with Christ at the end of the world. Having properly celebrated the death of Jesus Christ, His burial and His descent into hell, we can now adequately and understand what Holy Saturday has in store for us.