Bright Week

The services are entirely sung, and the Paschal hymns are included with the stichera taken from the Sunday Resurrection propers in the Octoechos, rotating through the various tones.

Thus, for example, while censing the church before the Divine Liturgy, the deacon recites a Paschal hymm in place of Psalm 50.

The Artos is a loaf of leavened bread impressed before baking with a seal of an icon of the Resurrection that is blessed during the Paschal Vigil.

This service is not found in the Typicon, but was composed in the fourteenth century by Nikita Kallistos Xanthopoulos, in commemoration of the renewal, i.e., the consecration of the temple known as the Life-giving Spring.

[4] On Bright Saturday, after the Divine Liturgy, the priest says a prayer over the Artos and it is broken up and distributed to the faithful.

[5] The date of Pascha determines liturgical cycles as well as the Epistle and Gospel readings for the subsequent year.

Russian Orthodox icon of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ depicting his descent into Hades , 16th century.
Priests in the Bright Week procession during (The Trinity Lavra , in Sergiyev Posad , Russia ).
The sanctuary , seen through the open Holy Doors during Bright Week. The epitaphios (deep red) is visible on the Holy Table ( St. Isaac's Cathedral , St. Petersburg ).
Bright Week procession ( Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church in Guslitsa )