Great and Holy Friday is the day Christ died on the Cross. It’s the day we stand at Golgotha and watch the God-man give up His spirit, descend into death, and break its power from the inside.
This isn’t a memorial service for something that happened long ago. On this day, the Church enters into the event itself. We take Christ down from the Cross. We wrap His body. We lay Him in the tomb. And we keep vigil, mourning what we’ve lost while knowing what’s coming on Sunday morning.
The Services
If you’ve only been to a Protestant Good Friday service, maybe an hour at noon with some readings and a sermon, Great and Holy Friday will surprise you. The day unfolds in a sequence of services that together form a liturgical drama.
It starts in the morning with the Royal Hours. These are expanded prayer services with Psalms, Old Testament prophecies, and Gospel accounts of the Passion. The readings connect the dots between what the prophets foretold and what happened on Golgotha.
In the afternoon comes Vespers, which includes the service of the Descent from the Cross. The priest removes the icon or figure of Christ from the Cross and carries it to the altar while we sing about Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking down the body. It’s not symbolic. We’re doing what they did.
Then comes the heart of the day: Matins with the Lamentations, usually served late Friday evening. This service centers on the Epitaphios, an embroidered cloth icon showing Christ laid out for burial. It’s placed on a bier in the center of the church like a tomb. We process around it. We sing the Lamentations, mournful hymns that grieve Christ’s death while confessing that this death is somehow victory. The priest reads the Twelve Passion Gospels, the complete Gospel accounts of everything from the Last Supper through the burial. It takes hours. Your feet will hurt. You’ll be tired. That’s part of it.
Many parishes end with a procession, carrying the Epitaphios around the church or even through the parking lot. At St. Michael, we’ve processed around the building on warm April evenings with the whole congregation following the tomb, singing in the dark.
What Makes It Orthodox
If you’re coming from a Baptist or non-denominational background, you might wonder why we don’t just have a single Good Friday service and call it done. Here’s the thing: we don’t separate Friday from Sunday the way Western churches often do. Great and Holy Friday isn’t an isolated commemoration of Christ’s death. It’s the second day of a three-day Paschal event that includes Holy Saturday and Pascha itself.
The theology matters here. We’re not just remembering that Jesus died for our sins in the sense of a legal transaction where God’s wrath needed satisfying. That’s too small. What happened on the Cross is that the incarnate God entered into death itself and destroyed it from within. He went down into Hades and shattered its gates. He took our corrupted human nature into the grave and brought it out healed.
So even as we mourn on Friday, the hymns are already shouting about victory. “Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross,” we sing. It’s paradox. It’s cosmic. The services hold both grief and triumph at once because that’s what the Cross actually is.
Catholics will find some of this familiar, but there are differences. We don’t have Stations of the Cross. We don’t focus on Christ’s physical sufferings in quite the same meditative way. And our Epitaphios service doesn’t have a direct parallel in most Catholic parishes, though they have their own Holy Week traditions.
Fasting and Participation
Great and Holy Friday is a strict fast day. Many Orthodox Christians eat nothing until after the evening service. Some take only bread and water. The idea isn’t to earn anything or punish yourself. It’s to enter physically into the solemnity of the day, to let your body participate in the mourning.
When you come to the Lamentations service, you’ll see people venerating the Epitaphios. They’ll bow, cross themselves, kiss the cloth. Some will walk under it. If you’re a catechumen, you can do this too. You’re not receiving Communion yet, but you’re part of the vigil. You’re one of the myrrh-bearing women keeping watch at the tomb.
Dress simply. Don’t schedule anything else that day if you can help it. I know that’s hard in Southeast Texas where your shift schedule might not cooperate, but if you can be there, be there. The services are long, but they’re supposed to be. We’re not trying to be efficient. We’re trying to be present at the most important death in history.
What to Expect
Bring a service booklet if your parish provides one. The texts are beautiful, but they’re also complex, and you won’t know them by heart yet. Don’t worry if you get lost. Just stand there. Listen. Let the words and the incense and the candlelight do their work.
You might cry. A lot of people do. There’s something about standing in front of that embroidered tomb, singing “Come, let us see our Life lying in the tomb,” that breaks through your defenses. That’s okay. That’s what the service is for.
And when you leave Friday night, don’t treat Saturday like it’s already Easter. We’re still in the tomb. Holy Saturday is its own thing, quiet and strange. But you’ll feel it building. By Saturday night you’ll be ready to hear “Christ is risen” like you’ve never heard anything before.
If you want to read more about Holy Week, Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s book Great Lent includes sections on Holy Week that are worth your time. But honestly, the best preparation is just to show up and let the services teach you.
