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→Celebration of the feast: new section
However, if it should be felt that still more work should be done, feel free to stick it back on. --[[User:Basil|Basil]] 09:51, April 20, 2007 (PDT)
== Celebration of the feast ==
This section needs a major revision in that the celebration begin with vespers. A section for vespers (or vesperal liturgy, or vespers with liturgy of St Basil) should be added. Why: Pascha doesn't start at midnight: it's no different from any other day of the year in that it starts with vespers the evening before. In this case vespers is combined with the divine liturgy of St Basil on Holy Saturday. At this service standard hymns of the resurrection are sung in tone 1, which is the tone of the day of Pascha; the resurrection gospel is read; the colors are changed to bright colors. Indications are that it's Pascha, and liturgically it is Pascha. Of course, the explosive celebration is held off until midnight, so that we don't say "Christ is risen" or sing the paschal troparion until midnight; the canons say the fast must continue till midnight; and this of course is because Christ didn't rise on Saturday afternoon but during the night. But liturgically it's Pascha by the time you're midway through the vesperal liturgy; certainly by the time the gospel is read and the colors are changed. The transition begins with the singing of resurrectional hymns at Lord, I have cried, just like on any other day of the year. According to the typicon (Moscow typicon at least) the timing of the St Basil's Liturgy is the latest in the year. Fr A Schmemann wrote of the "genius" of the Byzantine division of the feast into two parts: the Holy Saturday liturgy and the midnight service. In earlier times baptisms of catechumens would occur between the two services.