The Easter service in the church starts at midnight and lasts until the morning. Its beginning marks the beginning of the holiday. The Easter service is special - it is festive and light. After her visit, my soul is light and somehow especially solemn.
Christ's Sunday, Green Christmastide, Bright Day - all these are synonyms for Easter. Christians especially honor this holiday - the main Sunday of the year when Jesus rose from the dead. Easter is the personification of the victory of Love and Life. The church service on this day is joyful and radiant, as is the mood of all the parishioners attending it. The main part of the service lasts from half past eleven to four in the morning. Temples on this solemn night are usually overcrowded. Parishioners wishing to attend the service should leave the house in advance so that there is enough space. The temple is decorated with white flowers, the priests are dressed in solemn robes, the rest of the ministers of the church are also smartly dressed. The singing on this night is joyful and light, there are many candles in the church and in their light the frames of the icons are mysteriously gilded. The service is accompanied by the Blagovest - a special bell ringing. It is better to consecrate cakes, Easter and other food in advance, on Saturday. During the Easter service, with a large crowd of people, it will be difficult to do this. Half an hour before midnight, through the Royal Doors, the priest and deacon bring a canvas depicting Christ in the tomb - the shroud on their heads. The ministers place her on the throne. Here the shroud is located until the celebration of Holy Easter as a sign that Jesus stayed forty days on earth before the ascension. At midnight in the altar that marks heaven, the priests begin to sing the stekhira. It sounds like this: "Thy Resurrection, Christ our Savior, the angels sing in heaven, and on earth make us praise with a pure heart." The chanting of the stehira occurs three times. The second time it is also sung in the altar, one tone higher and with the veil drawn back. This is a sign that the destinies of humanity are revealed earlier in heaven than on earth. The third chant, in even higher voices, begins when the priests leave the altar and lasts until the middle. The choir in the middle of the temple and all the worshipers finish singing the stekhira, followed by the ringing. From the church, leave the Procession of the Cross and go around the church with the singing "Thy Resurrection, Savior Christ …". The course personifies the myrrh-bearing wives, who went with aromas “very early to the Sepulcher”. The participants of the Hod stop at the western gate of the temple, as if at the door of the tomb, where the people of Myron received the news of the resurrection. At this moment, the ringing dies down. The priest of the church takes a censer and envelops the icons and all the worshipers with the scent of incense. Then he takes a cross with a trisveshnik in his free hand and stands facing east. With a censer, the priest traces the sign of the Cross in front of the closed gates and begins the Bright Matins. Following this, the doors of the temple open and the gaze of the worshipers is the inner chambers decorated with candles and flowers. This is followed by Easter Matins. It consists of chanting a canon. Then the stekhirs are sung and the Gospel is solemnly read. The next step is the prayer outside the ambo, after which on the analogion, in front of the icon with the Risen Christ, bread is laid, prepared according to a special recipe. This bread, called artos in Greek, is blessed with prayer and sprinkled with holy water. Throughout Bright Week, bread remains in the church. At the end of the Easter Liturgy, joyful singing is heard, and all the believers, accompanied by bell ringing, approach the Lord's Cross. Here they exchange holiday greetings: "Christ is Risen!" - "Truly He is Risen!"
