Good Friday - Lamentations

The Lamentations Service

On the evening of Good Friday (which is actually Holy Saturday), we celebrate the Lamentations Service. At this service, we mourn Christ's death, but at the same time we remember why He died. The songs and hymns may be full of sad lament for all He suffered for us, but they also contain the hope and joy of the coming resurrection. Christ may be in the tomb, but He is certainly not at rest! He is doing the work of salvation, going down to Hades to raise Adam and Eve and all the other men and women who have died and to raise them up to heaven with him. This is why the Church seems to happy, even though we are remembering a sad event.

At the beginning of the service we see that members of the Church have lovingly decorated the tomb of Christ with beautiful flowers!

Can you still see the cloth icon, the Epitaphios?

The choir then sings the Troparia for Holy Saturday (also called "The Noble Joseph").

Soon the whole Church begins to sing the Lamentations, in four different languages! (English, Arabic, Slavonic [Russian] and Greek) These are a special set of hymns, in which about how sad we are that Christ had died. Many of them are written from the point of view of Jesus' mother Mary, the Theotokos. We hear her crying and mourning at the grave of her son, and we too mourn with her.

"In a grave they laid thee, O my Life and my Christ: and the armies of the angels were sore amazed, as they sang the praise of thy submissive love."

During one of the last verses, Fr. Philip went around the entire Church and sprinkled everything with holy water!

Close to the end of the service, the whole congregation made a procession, with candles, outside into the streets. Four men carried the Epitaphios, or the cloth icon of the buried Christ, while the choir slowly chanted, "Holy God."

The procession went across the street.

And over by the park!

Then back into the Church as everyone passed under the Epitaphios.

We then had a special Old Testament Reading from Ezekiel: the story of the raising up of the dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to prophecy to a bunch of bones, and suddenly they rise up and become living people again! ("Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones, Oh hear the word of the Lord!") This was a foreshadowing of Jesus' resurrection.

At the end of the service, everyone received a flower from the tomb.

Then members of the Teen SOYO (and others) spent the night at the Church. They kept Vigil: reading Psalms continuously throughout the night, right up until Church began the next morning.

The Resurrection is nearly upon us!