The Paschal Hours are composed of various paschal hymns. They begin with the “Blessed is our God,” followed immediately by the triple chanting of the troparion, and then continue as follows:-

“Let us who have beheld the Resurrection of Christ worship our holy Lord Jesus,” - this replaces the usual three psalms and so is sung three times.

“When they who were with Mary came, anticipating the dawn,
and found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre,
they heard from the Angel: why seek ye among the dead,
as though He were mortal man, Him who abideth in everlasting light?
Behold the grave-cloths. Go quickly and proclaim to the world
that the Lord is risen, and hath put death to death.
For He is the Son of God, Who saveth the race of man.”

“Though thou didst descend into the grave, O Immortal One,
yet didst Thou destroy the power of Hades,
and didst arise as victor, O Christ God,
calling to the myrrh-bearing women, Rejoice,
and giving peace unto Thine Apostles,
O thou Who dost grant resurrection to the fallen.”

“In the grave bodily, in Hades with Thy soul,
though Thou wast God;
in Paradise with the thief; and on the Throne
with the Father and the Spirit
was Thou who fillest all things,
O Christ the Uncircumscribable.”

Glory

 “How life-giving, how much more beautiful than Paradise, and truly more resplendent than any royal palace proved Thy grave, the source of our resurrection, O Christ.”

Both now

“Rejoice, O sanctified and divine tabernacle of the Most High; for through thee, O Theotokos, joy is given to them that cry: Blessed art thou among women, O all-immaculate Lady.”

Then follows the forty Lord, have mercies and the dismissal of the Hours. In this way, the third, sixth and ninth Hours are also chanted.

At the end of the Hours, we begin the Divine Liturgy with the usual priestly exclamation, then the clergy in the altar sing the paschal troparion, “Christ is risen” three times. Then we have the same verses that we had at the beginning of Mattins, with the troparion chanted between them. In place of the typical psalms we have festal antiphons. Instead of the trisagion, we chant “All ye that in Christ have been baptised, Christ have ye put on. Alleluia.” The Apostle reading is from the Acts of the Holy Apostles (Acts 1:1-8). The Gospel reading is taken from the first chapter of the Gospel of John ((1-17), where it speaks of the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is called the Word. On the first day of Pascha, the Gospel reading is often read in various languages - [among the Greeks, this is done, as it is here at Brookwood, with the Gospel on the Vespers of Pascha, ed.] - to signify that the glory of the Risen Lord has gone abroad to all peoples and is to be proclaimed in every tongue.

The megalynarion for Pascha is:

 “The Angel cried unto her that is full of grace:
O pure Virgin, rejoice, and again I say, rejoice;
for thy Son hath arisen from the grave on the third day.
Shine, shine, O new Jerusalem,
for the glory of the Lord hath arisen upon thee;
dance now and be glad, O Sion,
and do thou exalt, O pure Theotokos,
in the arising of Him Whom thou didst bear.”

Instead of “We have seen the true Light,” and before the dismissal, we chant the paschal troparion, “Christ is risen” three times. At the end of the Liturgy we have the blessing of the Artos. Artos is the Greek word for leavened bread, and this particular Artos is a loaf or prosphora, on which is imprinted or placed an icon of Christ or of the Resurrection of Christ. It reminds us now of two things. First that, through His death on the Cross and Resurrection, Jesus Christ is become for us the true and Living Bread. And secondly, that on several occasions by the breaking of bread, and through eating it with His Apostles, He confirmed in them the truth of His Resurrection. On the Saturday of the paschal week [or commonly now on Thomas Sunday - ed.], another prayer is read over the Artos, and it is divided and distributed to the faithful after the Liturgy.

On Pascha itself, at the end of the Liturgy, we also bless the paschal foods, those things that we have not eaten through Great Lent, cheese, butter, eggs and the like, and with these we then break our fast.