The Ordinariness of the Holy Saturday Vigil

It is a strange thing in the Byzantine Rite that our services for the holiest days of the year are often so liturgically ordinary.  In so many ways, they resemble the same service—Vespers, Matins, a Liturgy—that we might hold on any day of the year.  Holy Thursday has its propers and its long Gospel, but, otherwise, it is like a Vespers and Liturgy we might hold on any feast.  Holy Friday is, again, simply Vespers with an extra Gospel reading, until the unique and beautiful procession with the Shroud and the rite of entombment.  And the Paschal Liturgy is just a Liturgy, though with every possible hymn replaced with "Christ is risen!"

This is not the case with every service: Holy Wednesday adds an anointing service in the middle of the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy.  The Matins services stretch their structure to the breaking point, with the Twelve Gospels of Holy Friday, the Lamentations of Holy Saturday, and the unique and glorious remix of Resurrection Matins.

The Holy Saturday Vigil begins in a completely ordinary way as well.  We have just experienced the death and burial of Christ (Holy Friday Vespers), and a long lament at the tomb (Holy Saturday Matins), yet this Vigil begins like any Vespers.  The same psalms, the same litanies.  Should we not be mourning more?  But think of the Apostles and Myrrhbearers: most of them had little faith in the Resurrection, if any at all.  To most of them, Jesus had died, and dead would He remain.  Certainly, they had mourned Him, and they would mourn Him still, with the Myrrhbearers coming to the tomb to anoint Him again.  But they had their daily tasks, too, their usual Sabbath prayers.  Whatever Psalms they recited on every Sabbath, they would recite on that one too.  Life goes on, even when the beloved are dead.  Mourners still must eat.

So perhaps it is not too surprising that the Holy Saturday Vigil begins so ordinarily: it makes us reflect how Jesus' mourners, perhaps, fell back into their day-to-day lives so soon.  Even the first few stichera of the Lamp-Lighting Psalms are general resurrectional troparia, like the ones we'd sing any Sunday, even Sundays during the Fast.  

Yet the extraordinary breaks through the ordinary: new stichera appear, songs of hell and its harrowing, and tales of Israel of old, of its trials and triumphs and Passovers, prophets who fail, prophets who promise, prophets who live in the fire.  Finally, the solemn Psalm changes darkness to light, awakens the Lord from His tomb, and leaves the tomb empty and the altar shrouded.

An ordinary evening can become the hope of the race of man.

 

Text ©2025 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.


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