Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day ”” Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another ”” Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.
In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death the Christ continues to effect triumph.
”“Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983)
Great and Holy Saturday is commemorated as the Harrowing of Hell in the Church. Fr. Alexander is correct that it is one of many very important days during the Orthodox Holy Week (which is actually next week for us). It is also one of the traditional dates for receiving converts. I was baptized on Great and Holy Saturday in 2006.
[blockquote] Matins of Great and Holy Saturday is held on Friday evening. The service is known as the “Orthros of Lamentations at the Tomb”, because the majority of the service is composed of the clergy and faithful gathered around the tomb, chanting the “Lamentations” interspersed between the verses of Kathisma XVII (Psalm 118. At a certain point the priest sprinkles the tomb with rose petals and rose water. Near the end of the service, the Epitaphios is carried in a candlelit procession around the outside of the church as the faithful sing the Trisagion.
Vespers joined to the Divine Liturgy is served on Great and Holy Saturday morning. This is the Proti Anastasi (First Resurrection) service, commemorating the Harrowing of Hell. Just before the reading of the Gospel, the hangings and vestments and changed from dark lenten colors to white, and the entire mood of the service changes from mouring to joy. However, the faithful do not yet greet one another with the Paschal kiss, since the Resurrection has not yet been announced to the living.
If there are catechumens who are prepared for baptism they will usually be baptized and chrismated following the Liturgy of Great and Holy Saturday.
On Saturday night, the Paschal Vigil begins around 11:00 pm with the chanting of the Midnight Office. Afterwards, all of the lighting in the church is extinguished and all remain in silence and darkness until the stroke of midnight. Then, the priest lights a single candle from the eternal flame on the altar (which is never extinguished). The light is spread from person to person until everyone holds a lighted candle. Then a procession takes place circling around the outside of the church, recreating the journey of the Myrrh Bearers as they journeyed to the Tomb of Jesus on the first Easter morning. The procession stops in front of the closed doors of the church. The opening of these doors symbolized the “rolling away of the stone” from the tomb by the angel, and all enter the church joyfully singing the Troparion of Pascha. Paschal Orthros begins with an Ektenia (litany) and the chanting of the Paschal Canon. One of the highpoints is the sharing of the paschal kiss and the reading of the Hieratikon (Catechetical Homily of John Chrysostom) by the priest. The Divine Liturgy follows, and every Orthodox Christian is encouraged to confess and receive Holy Communion on this holiest day of the year. A breakfast usually follows, sometimes lasting till dawn. Slavs bring Easter baskets filled with eggs, meat, butter, and cheese—foods from which the faithful have abstained during Great Lent — to be blessed by the priest which are then taken back home to be shared by family and friends with joy.
On the afternoon of Easter Day, a joyful service called “Agape Vespers” is celebrated During this service the Great Prokeimenon is chanted and a lesson from the Gospel (John 20:19-25) is read in as many different languages as possible, accompanied by the joyful ringing of bells.[/blockquote]
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Week#Holy_Week_in_Eastern_Christianity]Source[/url].
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[blockquote]I was baptized on Great and Holy Saturday in 2006[/blockquote]
Gracious! Have you been baptised twice AO? How very unorthodox.
[blockquote] Gracious! Have you been baptised twice AO?[/blockquote]
No. I have been baptized once. There are no Mysteries outside the Church.