It’s the most joyful night of the Orthodox year. The Paschal service begins in darkness and silence, then explodes into light and singing when the priest first proclaims “Christ is risen!” at midnight. You’ll process around the church with a candle, sing the Resurrection troparion over and over until it’s stuck in your head for weeks, and celebrate the Divine Liturgy before breaking the Lenten fast with the first real meal in forty-nine days.
The service usually starts late on Holy Saturday night. By 11:30 or so, people gather in a darkened church. The mood is hushed, expectant. You’ve been through Holy Week. You’ve stood through the Lamentations service on Friday night, walked around the tomb, kissed the icon of Christ’s burial. Now the church waits.
Around midnight, the priest lights a candle from the vigil lamp that’s been burning all along. He comes out and says, “Come, receive light from the unwaning Light.” Everyone lights their candle from his. The church fills with small flames.
Then the procession starts. The priest, deacons, altar servers, choir, and congregation walk out the front doors of the church. We process around the building while singing. The church doors close behind us. We’re standing outside in the dark (or in the parking lot at St. Michael’s, if we’re being honest about Southeast Texas church architecture). The priest stands at the closed doors and proclaims the Resurrection. He sings, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!”
Everyone responds: “Christ is risen!”
The doors open. We process back in, singing that same troparion. And we don’t stop singing it. The Paschal troparion becomes the refrain for everything that follows. It’s sung between the verses of the Paschal canon, after psalms, during entrances. If you attend Pascha, you’ll hear it fifty times before the night is over. That’s the point. The Resurrection isn’t a doctrine to affirm once and file away. It’s the reality we’re living in, so we proclaim it again and again.
The procession symbolizes Christ’s harrowing of Hades. The closed doors represent the gates of death that couldn’t hold Him. When we process around the church, we’re reenacting the myrrh-bearing women coming to the tomb at dawn and finding it empty. We’re also joining the angelic proclamation, the announcement that changes everything. Death is defeated. The tomb is empty. The doors are open.
After the procession comes Paschal Matins. This isn’t your normal Sunday Orthros. Almost everything is replaced with paschal hymns and verses. Psalm 67 gets used as a refrain: “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered.” The Paschal canon, written by St. John of Damascus, gets chanted with the troparion as its refrain. The Gospel reading is John 1:1-17, the prologue about the Word becoming flesh. The Epistle is Acts 1:1-8, where the risen Christ appears to the apostles.
Then the Divine Liturgy begins without a break. It’s usually the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, but everything feels different. The vestments are bright white or gold. Flowers decorate the church. Instead of the usual Thrice-Holy Hymn (“Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us”), we sing the baptismal hymn from Galatians: “As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Alleluia.”
That substitution matters. Pascha is when the Church historically baptized catechumens. The Resurrection and baptism are linked. You’re dying and rising with Christ. The whole service breathes new life, new creation.
People receive Communion. The priest reads St. John Chrysostom’s Paschal homily, that beautiful sermon that invites everyone to the feast whether they fasted the whole forty days or showed up at the eleventh hour. Then it’s over. By 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, you’re standing in the parish hall with a plate of eggs and lamb, finally eating meat again, greeting everyone with “Christ is risen!” and hearing back “Truly He is risen!”
The atmosphere is hard to describe if you haven’t been. It’s not solemn. It’s not quiet. People are genuinely happy. Kids are running around with candles (carefully supervised, we hope). The choir is belting out the troparion. There’s incense and bells and the smell of flowers. Some people are crying. Some are laughing. Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote that Pascha is the Church’s experience of the Kingdom, and when you’re standing there at 1:00 a.m. singing your heart out, you understand what he meant.
In Antiochian parishes, you’ll often hear the troparion and responses in both English and Arabic, depending on the community. Some parishes do the full procession outside, weather permitting. Others adapt based on the building. The core remains the same: darkness to light, death to life, the tomb opened, Christ risen.
After the Liturgy, the fast is broken. Families bring food to be blessed. Eggs, cheese, meat, all the things we haven’t eaten since Clean Monday. The paschal greeting continues all week. Bright Week, the week after Pascha, is treated as one continuous Sunday. No fasting. Services keep the paschal order. You’ll come back for Agape Vespers on Sunday afternoon and hear the Gospel read in as many languages as your parish can manage.
If you’ve never been to Pascha, come. Show up Saturday night, even if you’re not Orthodox yet. Bring a candle or get one there. Stand in the back if you’re not sure what to do. When the priest says “Christ is risen,” say it back. You’ll be proclaiming the truth that the whole year points toward, the reality that makes everything else make sense.
