Great Thursday- Great Friday

Great Thursday night into Great Friday is one of my favorite times of Holy Week. After the Divine Liturgy, our ByzanTEEN Pascha retreat begins. We (the Teens and Young Adults) will spend most of the weekend at church praying, cleaning, making Easter Baskets for our parishioners and giving tours. On Holy Thursday night we get a large number of visitors from Roman Catholic churches coming to our church to pray. They spend the evening on Holy Thursday travelling to different parishes in the area. Because our parish is so unique, many of the faithful who come to visit us want a mini tour. The Roman Catholic parishes have Eucharistic Adoration on this night but we do not for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that Eucharistic Adoration is not a practiced tradition in the Eastern Churches. The Eastern churches never really experienced any controversies over the Eucharist like the West did. Because of the controversies that arose in the West, the beautiful practice of Eucharistic Adoration came about in order to show Christ to the people. Since this never occurred in the East, we don't have this practice. There is also a practical reason why Eucharistic adoration is not practiced in the East, our bread is leavened bread. We do not use a host. Our priest takes a small loaf of bread and cuts it into small cubes and places it into a chalice and then pours the Blood of Christ over the Body. Eucharist is placed into the recipients mouth via a spoon. The leavened bread would make it difficult to be placed into a monstrance. While we do not display the Eucharist, it is ever present in the tabernacle that sits upon the altar which is not easily seen because of the iconostasis or icon screen. The iconostasis serves a boundary between the Sanctuary, the Holy of Holies and the nave fo the church. There are four doors on the icon screen: the two side doors are known as Deacon Doors, anyone can pass through these doors during the liturgy; the two middle doors are known as the Royal Doors. Only the priest and deacon may pass through these doors and only at three times during the liturgy: when they are blessing the peopel, when they are carrying the gospel book and when they are holding the Eucharist. The icon screen also adds a mystical sense to our liturgy. It is a physical representation of what we believe. God has revealed some things to us while others still remain a mystery.

One thing that everyone notices when they walk into our church is that it is covered in icons like this one of Pentecost. Icons are literally Theology in color. They were used from the early days of the church as a way to teach those who could neither read nor write about their faith. We are blessed at Annunciation parish because Fr. Tom painted all of our icons (and he isn't done yet). Many of the icons must be painted a certain way. There are rules that the writer (not painter) of an icon must follow. However, with some saints and apostles there is a little bit of leeway with colors. The apostle in the middle of this icon is my favorite. When Fr. Tom began to paint it I asked him if he would paint one of them Orange and Blue (the school colors of the University of Illinois! Go ILLINI!) and he was more than happy to oblige.

After the tour groups have left, we start to prepare our church for the weekend. This includes helping our florist set up the flowers and setting up our tomb. The tomb sort of looks like a desk but on Great Friday Fr. Tom will place the plaschanitza or shroud on it and we will venerate it.

Great Friday-12am- Reading of the Psalms


At midnight the teens begin to chant the psalms. It is something we have done for at least three years. This year, we started out with 10: Cherie, Adam, Tim, Blaise, Krystal, Kelli, DeAnna, Lexie, Marijana, and myself. This is more than we have had in the past. Half of us have already gone to bed and I can't blame them.

I am crazy to stay up and do this but I can't help but hear the words of Christ in the gospel "will none of you stay awake with me?" running through my head. It is at this time that I feel like a small group of us really take on the role of the women followers of Christ. Traditionally, the Eastern church teaches that the apostles, save for John, all ran away, but the women were the ones who followed Jesus at a distant to his trial and death.
The tradition of reading the psalms is usually done in the monasteries, but I think this is the best way to spend the night. This is a small thing that we can do for Christ, who did so much for us. We may not sing in perfect pitch, we slip up on "thee" "thou" and "hast" and our voices grow hoarse, but it is worth it. About half way through we take a break from the psalms to sing an Acathist to the Mother of God. This is like the Byzantine equivalent to the Rosary. It helps to break up the monotony and offer praise to the God-bearer and Theotokos. After the Acathist. our number drops to three and then to just Cherie and myself. We are the oldest (both 21) and have stayed up through all of it for the past two years. It is dark and cold in the church. The floor is cold and we alternate sitting and standing to relieve our aching feet and backs. At about 5am the lights in church turn on and Fr. Tom comes in to work on the rest of the Pentecost icon. As he paints we continue to chant the psalms. He later told us that it was one of the most amazing things, to be painting and listening to people chant the psalms. At 6:20 am we sing psalm 150 a little louder and more exuberantly than we have been singing because we are finally dine. Cherie and I hug, knowing that we have kept each other awake.
We only have an hour and a half until the first of three of the Great Friday services begin. We freshen up and change clothes before getting some coffee (Black! Because we fast from meat and dairy on Great Friday) and waking the rest of the Teens.