COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
Good Friday evening 2025 in Rethymnon, Part 1: the procession of the Epitaphios leaves the Cathedral (Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Good Friday evening 2025 in Rethymnon, Part 2: the procession of the Epitaphios reaches the Church of the Four Martyrs (Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Patrick Comerford
I spent three or four hours last night (18 April 2025) at the Cathedral in Rethymnon, following the Great Friday or Good Friday prayers and services, presided over by Metropolitan Prodromos of Rethymnon.
The cathedral was packed inside, and there was as many people waiting patiently outside as a military detachment stood ready to provide a guard of honour.
Towards the end of the service, Metropolitan Prodromos came to the steps at the front of the cathedral to cense and bless the throng outside.
Acolytes had their candles lighting, and a group of young women and teenage girls were stood with their baskets of petals to be strewn before the Epitaphios.
As the Epitaphios came down the steps of the cathedral, with a large number of intoning and chanting priests, deacons, readers and cantors, people in the crowd jostled for positions to join the procession.
From the cathedral, we pushed and heaved our way through the narrow streets of Rethmynon, through the Porta Guora, the city’s old Venetian gate, and into the square in front of the Church of the Four Martyrs.
Similar processions from churches throughout Rethymnon, each with its own decorated bier and Epitaphios, were converging in the square, as they do on Good Friday each year. There a choir was singing traditional solemn Great Friday hymns to a square that was packed with thousands of people, many only able to cram into the side streets and alleyways.
From the steps of the church, Metropolitan Prodromos delivered his Great Friday address, and blessed the massed crowd.
As each Epitaphios was carried away solemnly, back to its own waiting church, the choir resumed singing on the steps of the Church of the Four Martyrs.
The Easter celebrations begin tonight with the first Eucharist of Easter beginning before Midnight.
Metroplitan Prodromos censes the people outside the cathedral in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Acolytes wait patiently for the procession of the Epitaphios outside the Cathedral in Rethymnon last night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
The Deposition of Christ from the Cross by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We have reached the end of Holy Week and the end of Lent. Today is Easter Eve (19 April 2025), known as Great Holy Saturday in the Greek Orthodox Church.
I am spending these closing days of Holy Week and Easter in Rethymnon, and I spent much of yesterday at the Good Friday services and processions here, and also had coffee during the day with friends in Rethymnon. I hope to have lunch in Iraklion later today with an old friend I have known for the best part of 20 years, and plan to be back in Rethymnon this evening for the Easter Eve liturgies.
But, before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects of the day.
The Harrowing of Hell, depicted in a fresco on a chancel arch in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Matthew 27: 57-66 (NRSVA):
57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 59 So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. 61 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.” 64 Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, “He has been raised from the dead”, and the last deception would be worse than the first.’ 65 Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.’ 66 So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.
‘So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb’ (Matthew 27: 59-60) … a 16th century sarcophagus of the Kallergis family in the Archaeological Museum in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Today’s Reflection:
George Koros (1923-2014) was one of the finest Greek solo violinists of our time. He was born on the island of Evia in 1923, and he started playing the violin at the age of eight, when his father – who was a church cantor and a teacher of Byzantine music – decided to replace the mandolin with a violin and a bow without strings. His professional career began a year later, when he began playing at weddings and feasts with his father.
His mother spurned an opportunity for him to have a classical musical education. But Koros later revolutionised Greek folk music through the introduction of the fiddle as an accepted instrument. He became an acclaimed, self-made musician, who composed about 2,000 songs. But despite his reputation in Greek folk music, for me he stands out for his Byzantine hymns, particularly during this Easter weekend in Crete. In these hymns, Koros returned to his roots in Byzantine music and with his violin he recreates the tradition of the early hymns he learned from his father in church as a boy.
George Koros died in 2014, and was buried in Kiffisia in Athens.
As I reflect here in Crete on this Saturday – between Good Friday and Easter Day – I recall how many years ago (2008), during a series of Holy Saturday reflections in Whitechurch parish in Dublin, I invited people to listed to George Koros using his violin to plaintively recall the sorrow of the tomb in two pieces: I see thy resting place (Τον Νυμφωνα Σου Βλεπω) and Life in the Holy Sepulchre (Η Ζωη εν Ταφω).
In the Western tradition of the Church, we seem to have contemplated the cross, and then moved to the empty tomb. At times, the deep joys of the Resurrection have often been overshadowed in the Western Church by the way of the Cross, as though the Cross leads only to death. But we have also neglected Christ’s resting place, his tomb, and given little thought to what was happening in the Holy Sepulchre on this day.
Here in Greece, this day, Holy and Great Saturday, is observed solemnly by the Orthodox Church, with hymns and readings that truly explore the theme of the Harrowing of Hell in depth. For this is the day on which Christ’s body lay in the tomb, this is the day on which he visited those who were dead.
The icon of the Harrowing of Hell reminds us that God reaches into the deepest depths to pull forth souls into the kingdom of light. It reminds us how much we are unable to comprehend – let alone take to heart as our own – the creedal statement about Christ’s descent into Hell – ‘He descended into Hell.’
Christ’s descent into Hell is captured in Saint Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2. In the Petrine letters, we are told that when Christ died he went and preached to the spirits in prison ‘who in former times did not obey … For this is the reason the Gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that … they might live in the spirit as God does’ (see I Peter 3: 15b to 4: 8).
In the NRSV, I Peter 4: 6 reads the gospel was ‘proclaimed even to the dead …’, reflecting the original Greek: ‘εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ νεκροῖς εὐηγγελίσθη …’ The New International Version, however, says the Gospel ‘was preached even to those who are now dead …’ But the word ‘now’ is not in the Greek text. It was inserted to rule out the idea that Christ preached to those who were dead at the time when Christ descended into Hell and preached to them there. Instead, the NIV interpolates and rewrites the text so that it says that Christ brought his good news to people who were dead at the time I Peter was written. If you remove the word ‘now,’ the English becomes ambiguous on that point, just like the Greek is ambiguous there.
The Early Church taught that after his death Christ descended into hell and rescued all the souls, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall.
The Harrowing of Hell is intimately bound up with the Resurrection, the Raising from the Dead, for as Christ is raised from the dead he also plummets the depths to bring up, to raise up, those who are dead. The Harrowing of Hell carries us into the gap in time between Christ’s death and resurrection.
In Orthodox icons of the Harrowing of Hell, Christ stands on the shattered doors of Hell. Sometimes, two angels are shown in the pit binding Satan. And we see Christ pulling out of Hell Adam and Eve, imprisoned there since their deaths, imprisoned along with all humanity because of sin. Christ breaks down the doors of Hell and leads the souls of the lost into Heaven.
It is the most radical reversal we can imagine. Death does not have the last word, we need not live our lives entombed in fear. If Adam and Eve are forgiven, and the Sin of Adam is annulled and destroyed, who is beyond forgiveness?
In discussing the ‘Descent into Hell,’ the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) argues that if Christ’s mission did not result in the successful application of God’s love to every intended soul, how then can we think of it as a success. He emphasises Christ’s descent into the fullness of death, so as to be ‘Lord of both the dead and the living’ (Romans 5).
However, in her award-winning book Light in Darkness, Alyssa Lyra Pitstick says that Christ did not descend into the lowest depths of hell, and only stayed in the top levels. She finds untenable his view that Christ’s descent into hell entails experiencing the fullness of alienation, sin and death, which he then absorbs, transfigures, and defeats through the Resurrection. Instead, she claims, Christ descends only to the ‘limbo of the Fathers’ in which the righteous, justified dead of the Old Testament awaited the coming of the Messiah.
Her argument robs the Harrowing of Hell of its soteriological significance. For her, Christ does not descend into hell and experience the depths of alienation between God and humanity opened up by sin. She leaves Christ visiting an already-redeemed and justified collection of Old Testament saints to let them know that he has defeated death.
Archbishop Rowan Williams has written beautifully in The Indwelling of Light on the Harrowing of Hell. Christ is the new Adam who rescues humanity from its past, and who starts history anew. ‘The resurrection … is an introduction – to our buried selves, to our alienated neighbours, to our physical world.’ He says: ‘Adam and Eve stand for wherever it is in the human story that fear and refusal began … (This) icon declares that wherever that lost moment was or is – Christ (is) there to implant the possibility … of another future.’ (Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ, p 38.)
I ask myself once again this morning: what is the difference between the top levels and bottom levels of hell? Is my hell in my heart of my own creation? In my mind, in my home, where I live and work, in my society, in this world? Is hell the nightmares from the past I cannot shake off, or the fears for the future when it looks gloomy and desolate for this planet?
But is anything too hard for Christ?
On this day, the icon of the Harrowing of Hell tells us that there are no limits to God’s ability to search us out and to know us. Where are the depths of your heart and your soul – where darkness prevails, and where you feel even Christ can find no welcome? Those crevices even I am afraid to think about, let alone contemplate, may be beyond my reach. I cannot produce or manufacture my own salvation from that deep, interior hell, hidden from others, and often hidden from myself.
Christ breaks down the gates of Hell, and as the icon powerfully shows, he rips all of sinful humanity from the clutches of death. He descends into the depths of our sin and alienation from God; and by plumbing the depths of hell he suffuses all that is lost and sinful with the radiance of divine goodness, joy and light. If hell is where God is not, and Jesus is God, then his decent into hell pushes back hell’s boundaries. In his descent into hell, Christ reclaims this zone for life, pushing back the gates of death, where God is not, to the farthest limits possible.
The music associated with this day in the Orthodox tradition, the icons and the readings, remind me that Christ plummets even those deepest depths, and that his love and mercy can raise us again to new life.
On this Saturday in Crete, as I prepare to take part in this evening’s Easter celebrations of the Resurrection in Rethymnon, I have been thinking of Christ lying in the grave, and thinking of how we can ask him to take away all that denies life in us, whether it is a hell of our own making, a hell that has been forced on us, or a hell that surrounds us. Christ reaches down, and lifts us up with him in his Risen Glory.
George Koros used his violin to plaintively recall the sorrow of the tomb in two pieces: ‘I see thy resting place’ (Τον Νυμφωνα Σου Βλεπω) and ‘Life in the Holy Sepulchre’ (Η Ζωη εν Ταφω)
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 19 April 2025, Easter Eve, Great Holy Saturday):
A ‘Holy Week Reflection’ has provided the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).’ This theme was introduced last Sunday with reflections by Bishop David Walker of Manchester, who is the chair of USPG trustees.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 19 April 2025, Easter Eve, Great Holy Saturday) invites us to pray:
Heavenly Father, we pray for those who have newly come to faith in the past year. May this Holy Week be especially blessed for them as they experience the depths of your love and the joy of salvation for the first time. Guide them in their spiritual journey and surround them with supportive community.
The Collect:
Grant, Lord,
that we who are baptized into the death
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
may continually put to death our evil desires
and be buried with him;
and that through the grave and gate of death
we may pass to our joyful resurrection;
through his merits,
who died and was buried and rose again for us,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
In the depths of our isolation
we cry to you, Lord God:
give light in our darkness
and bring us out of the prison of our despair;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Epitaphios in the Church of the Four Martyrs, Rethymnon, decorated with flowers symbolising the tomb of Christ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
