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I have a question. My wife and I belong a Roman Catholic parish however I grew up in a Byzantine parish. On Easter we always go to my home town. We also always attend the Holy Saturday Liturgy which begins in darkness with dark vestments and the vesper service (i believe). But at the gospel (the ressurection reading) the lights come on an the priest and servers have changed into white vestments. It's is a beautiful service.

I was speaking to me mom last night and she said that the new priest stated that attending that liturgy on holy Saturday (which begins at 4pm) does NOT satisfy the obligation to attend church on Easter.

This is confusing and I'd like someone to clarify. Why wouldn't it? The gospel is the ressurection.

I could understand if we only did vespers and not the entire liturgy, however we do.

Thanks in advance for the clarification.

You may have answered your own question. Speak to your own pastor before you leave for Pascha at your hometown.

IMHO, this is a real "downer" for the Feast of Feasts. You're supposed to enter the Mystery of the fact that when you're "in Christ" you're never going to die and the grave cannot hold you. And someone is splitting hairs about going to the DL twice in the same weekend? And someone is holding a very legalistic measure against the Mysteries revealed in the DL and other services?

Latin practice says that the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday form one seamless whole that we go home for awhile and come back to because there's so much to absorb. I've been in Orthodox parishes where they vigil from Great and Holy Friday until Pascha midnight where someone was in church continuously. I just find it odd that these holy days are seen as separate events when the Mystery itself unfolded over them all.

For me, this is the time I charge my spiritual batteries for working every day with the death of someone's loved one. Without the Resurrection, this all makes no sense whatsoever. The relationship with Jesus Christ, revealed in this Great and Holy Week, the reality that God became man in order that man might become like God, the fact that the grave is something to laugh at is all that matters. I try to get to the full round of services and am nourished by each one; if I miss one, my brethren in the Mystical Body of Christ are carrying me in their hearts. So I'm not worried about obligations. When one loves God, there is no such thing as an "obligation" because love makes that word unnecessary.

Have a blessed Pascha.

BOB

I'm not really sure about fulfilling an obligation but the way we have looked at it in my church is that on Holy Saturday evening we celebrate Christ's Resurrection but this has only been revealed to the angels in heaven. It is not until Sunday morning at Matins when we take on the role of the Myrrh Bearing Women during the Procession and we find that the church has become the empty tomb. This is the FIRST time we sing "Christ is Risen from the Dead, by death he conquered death and the those in the graves He granted life." We sing of Christ's Resurrection on Holy Saturday evening, but we don't sing Christ is Risen until Matins on Sunday morning.

Katie

For one who normally is of roman praxis, it meets the letter of canon law; it's a divine liturgy on the vigil of the feast celebrated according to a Catholic rite.

For a byzantine, however, its not meeting the Paschal obligation.

See, That's not been the case in this parish. It may be different this year with the new priest. We always use to sing "Christ is risen" at the end of the liturgy and again after at the blessing of the baskets.

In our Byzantine Catholic parish, our new pastor wrote in the bulletin that attending any one of the 3 services this weekend fulfills your Easter holy day obligation (3pm Vespers w/Liturgy of St Basil, Resurrection Matins, Easter Sunday Liturgy).

We all questioned this because we had never heard this before. Fr. said that this followed the canon law promulgated in 1990. We had been following canon law of 1918, which said you should attend both Sat. Resurrection Matins and Easter Sunday Divine Liturgy.

I have recently heard that an Orthodox Church celebrates the Pascha service on Saturday at midnight. I always thought that Saturday was a service where Jesus is indeed alive but only known to the angels or the saints in hades.
In any case, if one is observing the fast, would this person break it after attending a Saturday evening service (like a Latin who attends the Holy Saturday vigil), or do we wait until we can exclaim the Resurrection among those here on earth to celebrate?

Possibly someone with more intelligence than myself can help me with this. Why would any CHRISTIAN not feel compelled to attend the Easter Sunday Liturgy to celebrate the feast of feasts??? When I read this I just shake my head. Am I missing something it seems to me, although Fr. may have been well intentioned, he just lost those who don't really feel a connection to the Church, it has been reduced to "a law" that undercuts the feast of all feasts...I hope everyone understands what I am saying...I know it is kind of disjointed...

JOB:

Christ is Going to His Voluntary and Ever-Memorable Passion for us!!

It's the difference between "what do I have to do?" and being in love. It's the diffeerence between an arranged marriage and finding your soulmate. It's the difference between someone for whom living out the Faith in this life and looking forward to the Kingdom--a true believer--and someone for whom the ritual is real but for whom it's still lots of surface and the third person for whom it's a social or cultural habit.

It's the difference between the woman who walked past me one Christmas Eve at our Vigil Liturgy who said she was there "to get this out of the way so I can enjoy Christmas" and someone for whom this was the center of their Christmas. (I had to grab my pastor at the time because he was about to lunge forward and invite her to leave--saw the veins stick out on his neck and get that wild-eyed look on his face.)

I loved the Holy Saturday Liturgy when I was at university and the priest who served took everything--we started at 8 a.m. and finished at 12:30 p.m.; all the readings, all the litanies, all of every last word in the Russian tradition. That was after the day before with the same 4 1/2 hours of the Royal Hours--loved that. But people came and went during the whole time. Go figure.

Gotta love them all, as Our Lord does.

Bob

Thanks for challenging my post and making me think.

I agree with you completely about attending Easter Sunday Liturgy. I was just passing along this information that was news to me. I know that our church wants to bring back the Holy Saturday Vespers w/Liturgy of St. Basil, which is a two hour-long service and is dying out around here. Maybe this is a way to breathe some life into it.

Since this schedule is new this year, I don't know how many people at our church will plan to go to Holy Saturday Vespers from 3p-5p, then come back for Resurrection Matins from 8:30 - 10:30p by the time the baskets are blessed, then be back in the morning for 9:30 am Easter Sunday Liturgy.....then go home and get Easter brunch or dinner ready for the extended family.

I like to think that this church law makes it easier for those who might have difficulty attending every service. People who don't feel connected to the church probably just do what they want to anyway, no matter what the church law is.

Maybe this is about following the 'spirit of the law' as opposed to following the 'letter of the law.' I don't know.....I just like to think that people do the best they can.

I hadn't realized that the Holy Saturday Vespers+Liturgy of Saint Basil had ever gone away. I've known it and loved it since 1960.

Fr. Serge

It hasn't been celebrated in our parish for many years. Fr. is bringing it back.

While I understand and agree that any Christian should want to celebrate the Resurrection, and I agree that the best way is the one that Churches save for last on Holy week.
I have, however, from Orthodoxwiki seen a reference to this service coming from the ancient liturgical tradition the Church of Constantinople and at some point it was their primary Paschal celebration. So, just thought I would throw that out there. I really am not concluding anything by it though.

http://orthodoxwiki.org/Holy_Week#Holy_Saturday

Nice artilce by Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann on Holy Saturday:

http://churchmotherofgod.org/articl...8c7be7c=d3499d836e845630c8cca050994cef06

Doro raises some good questions.

The 'received tradition' is to anticipate most services by half a day. So, for Holy Saturday, the Church celebrates the Vespers and Saint Basil Divine Liturgy early in the day (when I was growing up it was at 9 AM). Well intentioned people are now saying that they must be moved back to their original time slots (that is, having the Vesper / Basil DL in the late afternoon or evening). But simply moving them creates a lot of problems and harms the faithful. The fact is that all the Divine Services of Holy Week continued to develop long after they began to be anticipated. So, for example, the Vespers / Basil DL became not the "First Mass of the Resurrection" but rather a Divine Liturgy with a theme with an announcement of the Resurrection in the Gospel but in the texts themselves more so a theme of the Lord working down in Hades to release those held there. Likewise, the music is not joyful or resurrectional but mournful. Look at the hymns: "Let all mortal flesh keep silent...." and "Morn not for Me, O my Mother, for I shall arise". To simply move these services in their current form only harms the Church. People come to a Vespers / Basil DL on Holy Saturday afternoon or evening expecting the joy of Pascha an don't hear a single "Christ is Risen!" and the music is somber, and then they don't come back the following year but go somewhere else. Add into this the fact that Pascha Matins (which is a favorite for its brightness in text and music) did not blossom until after the Vespers and Basil DL moved to the morning and you see the problems that simply moving the Vespers / Basil DL to the evening to make it the equivalent of the RC "First Mass of Easter" creates.

I've offered the example of two parishes before (but there are more). One parish in economically depressed area of southwest Pennsylvania restored the services of Holy Week to the 'received form' (including mostly the traditional times). Vespers and Basil DL on Holy Saturday were celebrated on Holy Saturday morning and about 75 attended. Then, at 9 PM they had Resurrection Matins and the Chrysostom Divine Liturgy, with about 150 people. And then there is the parish in Virginia, a thriving and growing area outside Washington, DC. It had a history of Vespers & Basil DL at noon, with about 50-75 people participating, then Resurrection Matins at 11 PM followed by the Divine Liturgy (but over the years crept back to start at 9 PM). It had 450+ attending, and then another 450 or so between two morning Divine Liturgies. Back when the mandates hit they put the Basil DL at 5 PM, and kept Matins and Chrysostom at 9 PM. The Basil DL gets about 50 and the Matins and Chrysostom gets about 50-74 people, and the two Sunday DLs get about 250 between them. That is about 10 years ago now and the parish has never recovered. One can do great damage by following good intentions when the people and their needs are ignored. This is why JPII condemned such experimentation (see "Inaestimabile Donum") and why the "Liturgical Instruction" clearly speaks about restoring the received forms before updating anything. This is so the Church can be formed properly by the Liturgy rather then reforming the Liturgy to suit personal agendas. It would probably take several generations of following the received tradition before the Church would be formed sufficiently to examine - together with the rest of the Byzantine Church (Catholic and Orthodox) any changes.