595. Holy Friday night: Matins of Holy Saturday: the “Lamentations Service”

    Please get to church tonight. If you cannot, please try to find yourself a way to worship live-stream. This is much too beautiful to miss – my favorite service of the year. Is this a funeral service? Is this a resurrection service? The answers are: Yes! We stand before the bier on which […]

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589. Holy Wednesday Morning Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

In case you’ve tuned in late to this series: These posts are “repeats” (with a little reworking each year) of my Holy Week posts from past years – which are based on talks I gave for about twenty years  at Holy Week services when I was pastor at Saint Nicholas Church, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Why do […]

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584. Palm Sunday Night: Bridegroom Matins (Orthros) of Holy Monday Morning

Matins in the evening?  In our parish churches, Matins/Orthros is normally sung in the morning. So why, you may ask, are we now suddenly having it in the evening? Also and equally odd, why during Holy Week do we have Vesperal Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts (obviously an evening service) in the morning? I’m really […]

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582. 1) Saturday Night Vespers for Palm Sunday. 2) How to keep Holy Week.

For those who may not know: I’m repeating my annual series of twice-daily Posts during Holy Week. Before we begin: As we move towards this Holy Week please be sure to pray especially for the millions of Orthodox people of Ukraine, many of whom again this year will not be able to get to church […]

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