Dear friends in Our Risen Christ,
Bright or Renewal or Diakainisimos Week is the first week following the Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, which is celebrated each year at Pascha. It ends the following Sunday of Thomas. Each day is referred to as: Bright Monday, Bright Tuesday, Bright Wednesday, etc. It is possible that the name was given because it marked the beginning of the new period of spiritual renewal for the faithful (catechumens) who were baptized on the evening of the Holy and Great Saturday.
There is absolutely no fasting during bright week and in years past no one was permitted to work or to seek public entertainment. Bright Week begins a period of celebration that continues for fifty days until Pentecost.
This celebration includes the practice of the faithful joyously greeting each other with the salutation of "Christ is risen," followed by the response "truly He is risen" or "indeed He is risen," as the whole of creation is renewed by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Services of Bright Week are done with the Royal Doors (central doors of the iconostasion) fully open.
This unblocked view of the holy altar symbolizes the open door of Christ's empty tomb as well as the rent veil of the Jewish Temple, which was torn apart at the moment Christ dies.
Funeral Services
If it is necessary to conduct a funeral service during Bright Week, this service follows the format for Paschal Orthros (Matins), with only a few funeral hymns being chanted. It held that those Orthodox Christians who die in penitence during this time are released from the bonds of their sins and are accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Every Bright Week we celebrate as much as we can. Each day we make or we buy food that we have been fasting from, we enjoy desserts, and we spend quality time with our immediate family and our dearest relatives and friends.
After the long journey of Holy and Great Lent and Great and Holy Week a weeklong celebration is needed. This really helps to emphasize for all the children the joy of the Risen Christ. It is important that they, as Christian children, experience the true joys in this life which are a foretaste of the heavenly joys that awaits those who believe in the Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.
The seven days of Bright Week are seen as "one day," like Pascha Sunday. Saint Augustine characterizes Bright Week as the "eight days of the neophytes (the newly illuminated through baptism).
In Constantinople during Bright Week the emperor would celebrate it with a great celebration and dignity. The emperor would invite the newly-illumined, as well as, the poor, to a great banquet on Bright Thursday. He would welcome the Clergy and the Patriarch and those around him. Gifts were also offered. They would also release from prison those with lighter offences or sentences.
On Bright Friday our Holy Orthodox Church celebrates the Life-Giving Spring of the Theotokos.
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!
With agape,
+Father George