During the first week of Holy Lent, special services are held in Orthodox churches. Church services these days are quite lengthy and permeated with the spirit of repentance.
Attending Lenten services is a very important component of Holy Great Lent, without which it is impossible to speak of the correct understanding of salvific abstinence during the Forty-Year period.
Divine services in the first week of Great Lent are performed twice a day - in the morning and in the evening. Church services are longest in the morning (about four to five hours). In the evening, the service is shorter, but equally important.
From Monday to Friday of the first week of Great Lent, in the morning, the services of Matins, the first, third, sixth hours, the succession of pictorial, as well as the ninth hour and Vespers are performed. On Wednesday and Friday after Vespers, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is served (this type of liturgy is celebrated in Orthodox churches only on the days of Great Lent).
Morning services are not particularly solemn. Most of the texts are read by the psalmist. At Matins, Hours, and Vespers, several Kathisma from the Psalter are read at once, which constitute most of the Lent service performed in the morning. At the end of the morning service, the dead are commemorated at the litiya.
In the evening, from Monday to Thursday, inclusive, in Orthodox churches, Great Compline is served with the reading of the great canon of penitence by Andrew of Crete. This divine service is especially important for the spiritual prayer mood of an Orthodox person, because it is the canon of St. Andrew that is permeated with the spirit of repentance and is the appeal of a sinned person to God for the forgiveness of sins.
Liturgies are celebrated on Saturday and Sunday mornings, during which you can receive the Holy Gifts. On the eve of these days, confession is performed in Orthodox churches at the end of the service. On Saturday evening, if several priests are present at once, the sacrament of confession can be performed during the Sunday all-night vigil.
The first week of Great Lent ends with the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. On this day, the solemn service of the liturgy of St. Basil the Great is performed, after which a special rite dedicated to the holiday is served in the churches. The very day of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, which falls on Sunday, is the historical memory of the Church about the overcoming of various heretical teachings that took place in the history of Christianity. The rite for the Triumph of Orthodoxy provides for special anathemas for those who dogmatically distort the purity of the Christian doctrine. In addition, many years are proclaimed to the primates of Orthodox Churches and the Orthodox Symbol of Faith is solemnly read.
