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I questioned what you wrote that I placed in italics. That the Ruthenians were always the exception.

That the Ruthenians are the exception today seems easy to establish, that they have been for a while seems easy to establish as well. That they have always been the exception seems a stretch. The question that I ask myself is "why would this be?" If everyone else around them did this including the RCs (meaning having a nightime mass), why would the Ruthenians do differently? There should be an accounting for that.

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You are the one at the seminary with access to an excellent library. Are there any comprehensive English-language histories on the customs of Holy Week and Pascha? Do they suggest that in recent times something different was the norm? Has the OCA mandated a Vesper / Basil / Matins as the new Paschal Vigil?

Admin

The OCA has not, to my knowledge, mandated such an aggregate as the one you propose above. I think you know that.

Please Administrator, I am asking a question, this is not an attack. If the fact I am unable to accept everything you say with no reservations causes you distress I will stop asking any questions of you. In my current work I am unable to make statements such as you have above without citing sources. Perhaps I am asking you if you have a source so that I can cite it. Did that ever occur to you?

Tony

Dear Nicholas - I'm painfully aware of Greek parishes in the USA starting Vespers and Basil at the crack of dawn on Holy Saturday. Some even do the service TWICE, would you believe, for a reason which charity forbids me to mention. They also truncate the service horribly.
9 or 10 AM for Vespers is not much of an improvement. 4 PM works fine for me (and we use all 15 readings - which people often find restful). However, we live in a pluralistic society. Perhaps beginning at 2 PM would be a reasonable compromise for those who so desire?

Incognitus

I missed the italics. Sorry.

All of these are good questions. It is always possible that the Ruthenians are clinging to some older custom (this would not be the first time). I have never made any conclusions about why this could be and don�t have any to offer. Several of our older priests told me years ago that many Ruthenians had the custom of celebrating the Matins and Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom at dawn. There are more questions than answers. Did the nearby RCs have an evening or midnight service between 866 and Vatican II? I don�t know too much about their services and it would be interesting to learn.

I indeed did see your post as a bit of an attack. I apologize. With respect, you do spend a lot of time on the Forum bringing attention to other people�s errors. So when I see you question something I tend to assume that you have a reference answer ready to be posted to prove someone else wrong.

Incognitus,

If the Vespers and Basil Liturgy were celebrated at 4 PM as a Baptismal Liturgy from which people would then stay or return to celebrate Resurrection Matins and the Chrysostom Liturgy I would have no problem with it being moved to the afternoon or early evening.

My problem is that the Vespers and Basil Liturgy is being moved to the evening and is now used as the �First Liturgy of Pascha�, similar to the Roman Catholic Easter Vigil. As I have noted earlier, the focus of this Vesper / Basil Liturgy is Baptism. It is not historically the first Liturgy of Pascha. In some places there is also a mandate to tack on Pascha Matins immediately upon the conclusion of this service. There is no expectation that those who come to this service will stay for any other liturgical service. This is Pascha for them.

Do you see a move across the Byzantine Churches (Orthodox and Catholic) towards moving the Vesper / Basil Liturgy to the evening and making it the �First Liturgy of Pascha�? If yes, do you think it will quickly replace the Midnight Matins and Chrysostom Liturgy? Do you see any of these other Churches moving to an Easter Vigil consisting of Vespers / Basil / Matins celebrated as one big, long service early in the evening?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Admin

I am told by someone more knowledgeable than me in Western liturgy that before the reforms of Pius XII there was a nightime liturgy of Easter in the RCC.

According to sources more knowledgable than I, prior to Vatican II, the service that is today the "Easter Vigil" in the RCC was celebrated early in the morning on Holy Saturday, often with many abbreviations and abuses. It was usually poorly attended by the laity as well, if it was celebrated at all. One story was told to me of a parish in which there were several priests, each taking a separate part of this liturgy for himself, ie. service of light, service of blessing of water, service of readings, etc., and celebrating them all at the same time, so that the WHOLE liturgy was celebrated, but in much less time. There was no evening service after this liturgy, unless perhaps you were in a parish run by an order that celebrated the hours.

Obviously, the reform of the Holy Week services in the '50s in the RCC and the relaxation of the fast before communion has made evening Liturgies possible again, both in the RCC and the Eastern Catholic Churches.

Could the variety of times for Resurrection Matins among Ruthenian Byzantine Catholics today be the product of priests serving more than one parish at a time? For example, there was a now-closed mission of a larger Ruthenian parish that had Resurrection Matins at 3:00 on Holy Saturday afternoon simply because this was the only time the priest could get there.

Dave

The Administrator asks me: "Do you see a move across the Byzantine Churches (Orthodox and Catholic) towards moving the Vesper / Basil Liturgy to the evening and making it the �First Liturgy of Pascha�? If yes, do you think it will quickly replace the Midnight Matins and Chrysostom Liturgy? Do you see any of these other Churches moving to an Easter Vigil consisting of Vespers / Basil / Matins celebrated as one big, long service early in the evening?"

Well, I do see a slowly increasing move towards having the Vespers with Basil at a reasonably vesperal hour. Part of this is certainly the influence of Father Alexander Schmemann; those who were students at Saint Vladimir's in his time learned to appreciate this service (and the seminary choir has done a nice recording of it). Still, even though the service is slowly gaining strength, it remains the smaller and less well-known service, and attracts the sort of people who don't mind coming to Church during the day on Holy Saturday and then returning at midnight.

However, at any rate among Orthodox, I have seen not the slightest sign of the Vespers with Basil displacing the Paschal Orthros and Chrysostom Liturgy. I ran into this custom once in a Ukrainian parish in Pennsylvania, and found myself profoundly disturbed by such an idea.

Vespers/Basil/ Paschal Orthros all in one fell swoop strikes me as an undesirable combination, and certainly I've never run into it anywhere (thank God).

The "tone" of the Vespers with Basil is markedly different from the "tone" of the midnight service. I wouldn't view either as a replacement for the other.

Incognitus

Originally posted by John K:
" ... Obviously, ... the relaxation of the fast before communion has made evening Liturgies possible again, both in the RCC and the Eastern Catholic Churches."

I don't understand. Evening Liturgies are only prescribed on fast days; the stricter the fast, that later the Liturgy, with the latest Liturgy of the year on Holy Saturday and the earliest on Pascha. Today, for the Annunciation, the hours are prescribed to begin at the third hour of the day, which makes vespers earlier than sundown, but, because of the kathismata at the hours, the liturgy is still later than on a non-fast day. At my parish, we began the hours at 11:00 and finished the vespers-Liturgy by 4:00 PM.

BTW, what do you mean by "relaxation of the fast before communion"?

Photius, Reader

The Administrator asked: "Do you see a move across the Byzantine Churches (Orthodox and Catholic) towards moving the Vesper / Basil Liturgy to the evening and making it the �First Liturgy of Pascha�? If yes, do you think it will quickly replace the Midnight Matins and Chrysostom Liturgy? Do you see any of these other Churches moving to an Easter Vigil consisting of Vespers / Basil / Matins celebrated as one big, long service early in the evening?"

Firstly, please note that there's only one Liturgy per day in the Byzantine tradition.

From there, for your consideration, I'll replicate a post I made two and a half weeks ago on another thread of this forum,
"Aliturgical days in the Great Fast". Please let me know if and what you think.

--- Commence forwarded post ---

Nicholas furthermore wrote: �So the idea of having Vespers & Liturgy & Matins as one service, is the wrong order. An innovation, which is more in keeping with the tradition would be to have Vespers and Matins ending with the Divine Liturgy. Never Vespers & Liturgy & Matins. Divine Liturgy is always the summit, the end, the climax of the service, for which a vigil (Vespers & Matins) is a suitable preparation?�

There's no need for innovation; if you want to make sense of the Great Sabbath and Pascha, just follow the Typicon! This would restore things to their late Byzantine splendor, when our rite was at its peak. Unfortunately, nowadays, only in a handful of monasteries is this done close to correctly, but the rubrics that aren't generally followed describe a coherent, sensible set of services:
One needs to understand that the Great sabbath commemorates the time that Christ was dead bodily, and so lasts from vespers on Great Friday to the Midnight Office on the Great Sabbath; the latter is technically on Sunday, of course, but the office is still that of the Great Sabbath, with the same canon used the previous day at Matins and the Tropar in use since two Vespers before it. One also needs to understand that the greater the fast day, the later the Liturgy, and the greater the feast day, the earlier the Liturgy. The latter is pretty much extinct, except on Pascha, but the former is still true, at least in monastic practice.

Below is a quick outline of the vigil; if anyone wants the full rubrics, I'm happy to translate them from the Sabbaite Typicon, published in 1906 in Moscow, that I own.

On Saturday, at the 10th hour of the day, Vespers with the Liturgy of Saint Basil is begun; this should be timed to end at the second hour of the night. If there be no Liturgy (for example, because there is no priest), then after the Trisagion, the troparia are �the Noble Joseph...�, Glory ... �Though Thou didst descend...�, Both now, �The Myrrh-bearing women...�.

After the dismissal, there is the usual blessing of bread and wine: Having censed them, the priest recites the usual prayer �O Lord Jesus Christ our God, having blessed five loaves ...� (Note that no oil is blessed because it is a strict fast day.) Then we eat, each in his place: each is given a round loaf of bread, as though it were a prosphor, six dates or figs, and a measured cup of wine. (Some other options are given in the rubrics, but these are trivial in the scheme of an outline)

During this, the reading of the Acts of the Apostles commences. (Note that this parallels a normal vigil, where there is a reading between Vespers and Matins, when bread and wind that were blessed are consumed; for a Sunday, the New Testament is read: The Acts during Pentecost, then the Epistles until [as I recall ... didn't look this up) the Sunday of the Second Coming, then from the Apocalypse]; Saint John Chrysostom said that the Acts of the Apostles are the greatest proof of the Resurrection.)

The Acts are read until the fourth hour of the night, when the Midnight Office Commences. At this office, the canon of the Great Sabbath is sung ... after the third ode, the sessional �Thy grave, O Saviour...�, Glory ... both now ... the same; and a reading from Epiphanius of Cypress, which begins �What great silence is today, that the King sleeps?� ... after the sixth ode, the kondak and ikos of the Great Sabbath, and the reading from Chrysostom ... After the trisagion, the tropar, �Though Thou didst descend ...� ... and the dismissal of the previous day. (Note that the Typicon does not mention what I have always seen, the taking of the Shroud into the altar at the ninth ode of the canon.)

On the Holy and Great Sunday of Pascha ... a verbose description of the lamp lighting and and other preparations, and the procession around the temple. Pascal Matins. The Hours. The Liturgy. The Blessing of food. The blessing of the Artos. Warnings against bringing meat into the temple and against the Armenian custom of sacrificing a lamb.

I hope this inconsistently edited abridgement of many pages of rubrics is of use to someone in understanding the Byzantine Pascal Vigil services.

Photius, Reader

Photios wrote:
BTW, what do you mean by "relaxation of the fast before communion"?

Eastern Catholics, like Roman Catholics, are only required to fast one hour before the reception of Holy Communion. This being said, the faithful could/would receive at evening liturgies, making the move of the Holy Week Vespers/St. Basil Liturgies on Thursday and Saturday, back to more appropriate late afternoon or evening time frames, from the morning times when they were previously served.

In response to John K, the Instruction on implementing the liturgical prescriptions of the Code of Canons urges us to renew the use of the full traditional Eucharistic fast.

Incognitus

What was the reason the Latin Church abandoned the old midnight fast? Was this not the custom of the whole Church? What was the reason given for the change?

nick

I heard several reasons at the time, and don't know how true any of them actually are. I remember being told that the early/medieval church did not understand the digestive process, so they had a much longer fast to insure food wasn't present in the stomach at the time of communion. I also remember being told that 1 hour was sufficient time for that not to happen. In the Latin Church, my understanding is that water is always permitted, even within the 1-hour fast. Maybe someone else knows more about this.

Tony and John,

As a then-Latin growing up and serving as an altar boy throughout the 50s, I never remember the Easter Vigil commencing any earlier than the evening hours on Holy Saturday, nor do I recollect it being served as the Easter Liturgy.

Many years,

Neil