§ 118. The Special Services of the Great Sabbath. The services of Great Saturday are dedicated to the commemoration of Jesus Christ’s sojourn in the tomb, and its significance for the faith of the Christian, and to the resurrection of the Saviour from the tomb. The services which most clearly speak of these themes through their prayers, hymns and readings, are Mattins and the Liturgy.

According to the typicon, Mattins should be served in the deepest night time [in practice it is usually served late in the evening on Friday - transl.]. It is essentially a prayerful vigil before the Lord as he lies in His tomb. After running its usual course up to the Six Psalms, the litany which follows them and the “God is the Lord” verses, we chant the troparion mentioned above, “The noble Joseph.” During this all the faithful hold lighted candles, and the clergy and servers come out of the sanctuary to the Winding Sheet, and then cense the church. After the chanting of the troparion, we begin the chanting of the graveside lamentations before the Divine Dead One. This is composed of the verses of Psalm 118, interspersed with chanted verses which have a New Testament message. They speak of the Divinity of the One Who has been buried; they recall the affliction suffered at that time by the All-pure Theotokos, and they confess our faith in the Lord as the Redeemer. The psalmic verses and interspersed chanted hymns are known together as the “blameless” (from the first verse of Psalm 118). The whole is divided by litanies into three stases. After the third one we go straight into the chanting of “The assembly of the Angels was amazed to see Thee accounted among the dead…,” with the refrain “Blessed art Thou, O Lord….”

After the “blameless” we sing the canon, “The waves of the sea,” in which there is portrayed the horror felt by all creation seeing the Creator and Lord in a grave. With the solemn chanting of the “Holy God,” at the end of the Great Doxology, the Winding Sheet is raised above the priest’s head and carried, accompanied by incense and banners, out of the church and around the building, commemorating the burial of Christ. This also represents the descent of Jesus Christ into hades, and His triumph there over hades and death. Through His passion and death, the Saviour has again opened unto us the gates of Paradise and so the Winding Sheet in borne in through the doors of the church, and taken up to the open Royal Gates. The choir chants “The noble Joseph” again, and then there is appointed an Old Testament reading (Ezekiel 37:1-14) about the dry bones and the resurrection of the dead. There follows an Apostle reading (1 Cor. 5:6-8, 3:13-14), which instructs the faithful that Jesus Christ is the true Passover for all of us, that He became a curse for our sakes that he might deliver us from the curse of the Law. Then the Gospel (Matt. 27:62-66) which tells how the high priests obtained a decision from Pilate to set a guard at the tomb and to seal the stone. After the Gospel we have a threefold litany and the dismissal. Then we read the First Hour.

The Liturgy for the day is that of St Basil the Great joined to Vespers. As it is the evening service (and so properly belongs to the Sunday) the hymns speaking of the burial of Jesus Christ are joined to ones hymning His Resurrection. So on “Lord, I have cried,” the resurrectional verses of the first tone are sung, and after the “Glory, both now” we have the dogmatic theotokion in the first tone, “The universal glory.”

After the Vespers entrance, during which the Gospel is carried, we read fifteen Old Testament lections. These contain the most important Old Testament prophesies and foreshadowings of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ - [one is the whole Book of Jonas]. Then in place of the trisagion in the Liturgy, we chant “All ye that in Christ have been baptised, Christ have ye put on. Alleluia.” The Apostle reading (Romans 6:3-11) tells how we must die unto sin to live with Jesus Christ. After this, we chant, “Arise, O God, judge the earth,” and during it the clergy change their dark vestments for light ones. The altar coverings and hangings throughout the church are then changed to light, paschal ones, for the Gospel reading which follows immediately (Matt. 28:1-20) announces the Resurrection of the Saviour, and for it everything must be clothed in brightness. [At this point at Brookwood, we also scatter scented pot pourri throughout the church.] Then the rest of the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great follows according to the appointed order, except that instead of the usual Cherubicon we sing the following hymn:

“Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and meditate nothing earthly within itself; for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh to be slain, and to give Himself as food for the faithful. / And before Him come the Angelic hosts with all dominion and power, the many-eyed Cherubim and six-winged Seraphim, covering their faces and crying aloud the hymn: Alleluia.”

In place of the usual magnification of the Mother of God, we chant the irmos of the ninth ode of the canon:-

“Weep not for Me, O Mother, when thou beholdest in the tomb the Son Whom, without seed, thou didst conceive in thy womb: for I shall rise again and glorify Myself, and, in that I am God, I will raise in glory that hath no ending those who with faith and love do magnify thee.”

In accordance with an ancient custom, the faithful may then remain in church until the approaching festival itself, and during this time they listen to the reading of the Acts of the Apostles. [Usually, because the Liturgy is not celebrated very late, there is a interval, and the reading of the Acts is started later in the evening and continued up to Nocturns at about half-past-eleven.] So that during this period the faithful might be strengthened, the typicon allows that at the end of the Liturgy bread [and often dates and figs] are blessed and distributed to the faithful. The services of Great Saturday thus prepare us and lead us up to the approaching Holy Day, which we account the festival of festivals [Pascha].

…to be continued with “The Festal Services”