On Holy Thursday after Liturgy, the kids, as is the tradition here, boiled eggs and dyed them red for the Resurrection service after midnight on Sunday morning. At the end of the Liturgy, around 2:20 AM, we blessed them and handed them to the faithful, who cracked them with their friends and proclaimed joyfully "Christos Anesti!"
Before the Resurrection though, we passed through the Cross and Christ's descent into Hades. Above is a photo of the church on Holy Friday morning.
And then on Friday night, we held the "funeral" service for Christ, placing a representation of Christ "the epitaphion" onto a bier elaborately decorated with flowers, and we processed throughout all of Portaria, meeting in the center of the town with the other parish, saying a few words, and them coming back. In all, it took about an hour. As you can see from the photos, there were hundreds and hundreds of people at the service, most of whom followed the procession with lit candles as we sang repeated the Lamentations.
Some of the local kids during the procession.
The decorated bier and epitaphion. About 15 women stayed after the end of the long Thursday night service (which ended about 10:30) to decorate the bier, all the with real flowers. They finished at 2:00 AM.
More photos from the procession as we wound our way along the cobblestone paths of Portaria.
For more photos, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment