Bright Week, aka Renewal Week, the first week after Pascha
Having seen the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship the Holy Lord Jesus, the only sinless one. Your Cross do we worship, O Christ, and Your holy Resurrection do we hymn and glorify. For You are our God, we know no other but You, we call upon Your name. Come all the faithful, let us worship the holy Resurrection of Christ; for behold through the Cross, joy has come in all the world. Ever blessing the Lord, we extol His Resurrection. For enduring the Cross for us, He destroyed death by death.
When the women with Mary had come before dawn, and they found that the stone had been rolled away from the sepulchre, they heard from the Angel, “Why do you seek among the dead, as a mortal man, the One who exists in everlasting light? See the grave clothes in the sepulcher. Run and proclaim to the world that the Lord has risen and put death to death; for He is the Son of God who saves the human race.”
Though You went down into the tomb, O Immortal One, yet You brought down the dominion of Hades; and You rose as the victor, O Christ our God; and You called out “Rejoice” to the Myrrh-bearing women, and gave peace to Your Apostles, O Lord who to the fallen grant resurrection.
In body were You inside the sepulchre, and with Your soul in hell, as God in Paradise were You as well with the Robber, and on the throne with Father and Spirit, O Christ, filling all things, being uncircumscribed.
How full of life and even more beautiful than paradise, and by far more splendid than any king’s royal chamber has Your sepulcher, O Christ, been shown to be, and the source of our own resurrection.
Divine and hallowed habitation of the Most High God, rejoice. For through you, O Theotokos, has the joy been bestowed on us who cry aloud to you, O Lady, blessed are you among women, all-blameless one.
Christ is risen from the dead, by death trampling down upon death, and to those in the tombs He has granted life.
The human heart is in the most need especially of the healing touch of Jesus. Many don’t have in person contact with the fullness of the Good News of Jesus Christ in the form of a local Orthodox Church Parish with a full time Priest or even a Deacon for a reader service. Many Priests and Deacons work unrealistic bi-vocational hours to share the love of Jesus. We can bring relief.
