April 22ndOk, so not quite Pascha at the Patriarch, but as you may have noticed by now I'm a sucker for alliterations, and "Holy Friday at the Patriarchate" just doesn't have the same ring.
This year, Orthodox Easter and Western Easter fell on the same date, so on April 22nd I headed to the Patriarchate for Holy Friday evening. I've tried to go to other services throughout Holy Week, but apparently things are done differently here, and I showed up for what I thought was the Holy Unction service on Wednesday and the door was locked.
As it is, the Patriarchate is always crazy busy and crowded, with tourists (Greek, for the most part) snapping away pictures and pushing their way through the communion line. So I thought it best to arrive early, and snagged a seat. The service was very nice, the parishoners not so much. One man near me without a seat was speaking at normal volume throughout the service and grumbling about not getting a seat. The epitaphion (a carved wooden structure representative of Christ's tomb) was beautifully decorated with spirals of flowers.
An interesting point of the service was they had the youth sing the lamentations, including the CITs (chanters-in-training, for lack of a better term, who stand with the senior chanters at the stands every week). It was very nice.
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