Funeral procession marks 'Great Friday'

Solemnity, bonfires and dancing are all part of the Eastern Orthodox Easter, writes Patrick Comerford

For the Eastern Orthodox world, Easter - the most important religious holiday - is still five weeks away. The week leading up to Easter is full of celebrations in Greece and Cyprus, and in the villages of Crete the preparations begin on Lazarus Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday, when children wander the streets singing Easter songs.

Early on Holy Thursday, Greek women traditionally make special Easter breads while the children dye and paint eggs red - a tradition that has still not given way to commercial competition from chocolate eggs. Later in the day, bonfires are lit in church courtyards, representing the fire in the courtyard of Caiaphas during Christ's trial.

Good Friday - or "Great Friday", as it is known in the Greek Orthodox world - is a solemn, sombre day. In every church, women set up a funeral bier for the cloth bearing the image of Christ's body, the Epitaphios. Throughout the afternoon, people go from church to church, viewing the biers strewn with rose petals and praying and kissing the crucified image.

The main Great Friday liturgy takes place in the evening. When I visited the Phaneromeni Church in central Nicosia, after the singing of the great Good Friday hymn, the Axion Esti, soldiers and scouts carefully carried the bier shoulder-high into the square outside. The bishop led a procession through streets bordering the Green Line that divides the Cypriot capital.

In every town and village, as this procession makes its way through fashionable shopping streets or narrow alleyways, people stop for prayer, ending each time with the refrain "Kyrie, kyrie eleison" (Lord have mercy, O Lord) .

As part of the pious Greek custom, people cross themselves as they push under the moving bier: mothers force through small children in buggies, young couples clasp hands as they stoop, soldiers carrying the bier photograph one another as they bow and bob below it.

Throughout Friday night and Saturday morning, women keep vigil in the churches, but by Saturday night, the streets are decorated with garish lights wishing everyone "Kalo Pascha" (happy Easter), and large bonfires are burning in each church courtyard.

Long before midnight, the churches are packed with people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, on each other's toes, and pulpit steps are layered with children anxious for a view across the adult heads. As midnight approaches, the lights are dimmed and then extinguished, leaving the church in complete darkness. And then the shout goes out: "Avto to fos . . . " (This is the Light of the World). Flames flicker from the three candles held by the priest before a torrent of candlelight spreads rapidly through the congregation with the joyful acclamation: "Christos anesti" (Christ is Risen). As the priest pushes his way through the church to bring the Light of Christ into the darkness of the world, the throng follows, moving in a procession around the church as some of the more valiant young men will leap over the bonfire on which an effigy of Judas has just been burned to the peal of the bells.

As people drift away, they take their candles, hoping to keep the flame flickering until they reach home, each family using the candle to mark a black sooty cross on the lintel of the door. The Lenten fast is broken with an early meal of mayiritsa, a soup made with lamb tripe, rice and lemon.

Easter Day is a day for families, as adults and children return to the villages of parents and grandparents. The rest of the lamb is roasted on the spit, the red eggs are cracked, and the songs and dances carry on into the evening.

And until Ascension Thursday, the traditional greeting and response are "Christos anesti" (Christ is risen), "Alithos anesti" (He is truly risen).

• Greek Easter Day this year falls on May 5th.

• Rev Patrick Comerford is an Irish Times journalist and an Anglican priest