Christ is Risen! (Oriental Orthodox celebrations)

[dzheremi]

Christ is risen!

Liturgy broadcast from the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of St. Vartan in NY:

A very short (38 min) selection from the Coptic Orthodox liturgy as celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Mark in El Abassiya (Cairo), beginning with the hymn "Ya Kul al Sefof" (All Ye Heavenly Multitudes). I can't find the full liturgy at the moment, but this has the always electrifying resurrection reenactment!

A small portion of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Pascha (Fasika) as celebrated at Debre Haile Kidus Gebriel Church, which Google tells me is either in Kentucky of Washington DC:

The full Paschal service of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church of India, celebrated by Abp. Mor Titus Yeldho:

I could find nothing recent by the Middle Eastern Syriac Orthodox yet, but if I find it I will post it here. Same with longer/complete videos of the Coptic and Ethiopian services (I also looked for Eritrean paschal videos, but couldn't find anything recent). Sometimes it's difficult to find this stuff because while I can read Ethiopic characters (and Syriac, so long as it is in the Estrangelo/classical book form, rather than the Serto/Western which you can find used by Syriac Orthodox and Maronites), I can't type in it. Oh well.

All that matters is that Christ is risen!

 

[Monk Brendan]

Christ is risen!

Liturgy broadcast from the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of St. Vartan in NY:

A very short (38 min) selection from the Coptic Orthodox liturgy as celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Mark in El Abassiya (Cairo), beginning with the hymn "Ya Kul al Sefof" (All Ye Heavenly Multitudes). I can't find the full liturgy at the moment, but this has the always electrifying resurrection reenactment!

A small portion of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Pascha (Fasika) as celebrated at Debre Haile Kibuds Gebriel Church, which Google tells me is either in Kentucky of Washington DC:

The full Paschal service of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church of India, celebrated by Abp. Mor Titus Yeldho:

I could find nothing recent by the Middle Eastern Syriac Orthodox yet, but if I find it I will post it here. Same with longer/complete videos of the Coptic and Ethiopian services (I also looked for Eritrean paschal videos, but couldn't find anything recent). Sometimes it's difficult to find this stuff because while I can read Ethiopic characters (and Syriac, so long as it is in the Estrangelo/classical book form, rather than the Serto/Western which you can find used by Syriac Orthodox and Maronites), I can't type in it. Oh well.

All that matters is that Christ is risen!

Truly He is risen!

 

[Stabat Mater dolorosa]

Alleluia, alleluia!

Revelation 1:17-18
17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

 

[“Paisios”]

Christ is risen!

Liturgy broadcast from the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral of St. Vartan in NY:

A very short (38 min) selection from the Coptic Orthodox liturgy as celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Mark in El Abassiya (Cairo), beginning with the hymn "Ya Kul al Sefof" (All Ye Heavenly Multitudes). I can't find the full liturgy at the moment, but this has the always electrifying resurrection reenactment!

A small portion of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Pascha (Fasika) as celebrated at Debre Haile Kibuds Gebriel Church, which Google tells me is either in Kentucky of Washington DC:

The full Paschal service of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church of India, celebrated by Abp. Mor Titus Yeldho:

I could find nothing recent by the Middle Eastern Syriac Orthodox yet, but if I find it I will post it here. Same with longer/complete videos of the Coptic and Ethiopian services (I also looked for Eritrean paschal videos, but couldn't find anything recent). Sometimes it's difficult to find this stuff because while I can read Ethiopic characters (and Syriac, so long as it is in the Estrangelo/classical book form, rather than the Serto/Western which you can find used by Syriac Orthodox and Maronites), I can't type in it. Oh well.

All that matters is that Christ is risen!

Truly He is risen!

Thank you for sharing.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Truly He is Risen!

I'm still too tired to catch up but I will try to watch later.

I met our local Coptic priest on Saturday. He and his wife were in Hobby Lobby when I stopped to buy a replacement lantern. He was in cassock with his cross so I figured he had to be Orthodox so I offered a Pascha greeting and chatted with them, hoping to visit their Church soon.

 

[dzheremi]

They say good things come to those who wait...

Eritrean Orthodox Pascha (Fasika) celebration 2019 at St. Mary Eritrean Orthodox Church, Chicago, IL.

A more full presentation of the Coptic Pascha, as presented on Coptic satellite TV:

A note for the curious: The Egyptian generals and so forth in attendance is a secular social custom in Egypt to emphasize the unity of the Egyptian people and the commitment of the state to its largest non-Muslim minority and indigenous population. I don't know how long it has been that way (I would think at least since the time of HH Pope Kyrillos VI in the 1960s, from what I have seen of video footage from that time; apparently the appearance of the Theotokos atop her Church in Zeitoun deeply affected President Nasser, and many other Muslims who saw her there with their own eyes), but I do know that when the government of the Muslim Brotherhood's party and President Morsi did not send even one official of any kind to the Coptic Paschal liturgy, it was seen by everyone as a break with tradition and a cause for serious concern, like it was his/their way of saying "We are against you and you cannot expect us to protect you, since you're not Muslims." It's a very hardline thing, you know? In Egypt for the Muslim fast, the Copts have made it a tradition to give their Muslim neighbors and friends dates with which to break their fast, even though we obviously don't celebrate that as a holiday.

Anyway...sorry to turn this into a rant. I just wanted to point that out because it's obviously not every day that you see uniformed Muslim officials at a Christian liturgy, but for the Church in Egypt it is considered a social tradition and a good sign for the future that it is restored under the current regime.

The Syriac Orthodox Paschal liturgy as celebrated St. Barsaumo Syriac Orthodox Church in Markham, Ontario, Canada.

This is the only seemingly complete celebration I could find, though I get the feeling that this particular church is perhaps not the most traditional, as they use an organ, though more like how the Armenians might than how the Roman Catholics or others do (so that it outlines the melody, rather than driving it, and is kept well in the background to provide a kind of 'ison' type effect...still weird to me, though...haha), which is not something I've seen in any other Middle Eastern Syriac Orthodox church (the Indians, on the other hand...).

At least you get to hear a bunch of spoken and chanted Syriac, even if it's dominated by the ladies who were apparently closest to the microphone until the priest takes over (Fr. Girgis Elias), and there's a point where they're too loud and everything starts feeding back...and the audio cuts out here and there... (come on, fellow OO people! Can we finally get it together with regard to the recording of our liturgies, especially if we're going to present them to the world? Maybe it's because I come from a family with a music industry/concert touring background, but I'm always listening to recordings of the liturgy and thinking "Microphone placement! Move the dang microphone just a little bit!" Interestingly, I don't think I've ever noticed this among the Armenians or the Tewahedo Orthodox, at least not here in the West...it's a Syriac and Coptic peculiarity, I guess.)

Finally we have what appears to be the liturgy as celebrated in the French Coptic Orthodox Church, which has been an independent body within the Coptic Orthodox Church in Europe since 1994, when HH Pope Shenouda III elevated them from being an eparchy (est. 1974) to being an autonomous -- but not autocephalous (i.e., their current leader, HE Metropolitan Athanasius, is a member of the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church; they don't have a Holy Synod of their own) -- Church. This is basically the same arrangement as the now non-canonical British Orthodox Church had from 1994 until they left the OO communion in 2015, where it's essentially one diocese within the larger COC that has been granted autonomy in recognition of its unique mission to the people of this particular place.

So it's not really a separate church (that's why its liturgy is the Coptic liturgy; it's Coptic, after all), but it deserves mention due to its unique situation.

I miss the previous metropolitan, HE Marcos, who was an ethnic French person (if there is such a thing? I don't know how ethnicity works in every society), but it is good to see them continue after his passing in 2008 with the current leadership. Plus, to hear the Coptic style of chant in French, as in the reading beginning at ~1:41:21, is very interesting. I must admit that I am one of those rare people who does not find French to be a particularly beautiful language, just in terms of the way it sounds (the nasalization, the guttural R..it's a bit much; je suis désolé), but I believe the chant -- and of course what is being chanted -- brings out the beauty of it.

 

[dzheremi]

An aside: If French Coptic chant is something you're interested in, there are other churches than the one in the video which have taken it upon themselves to produce Coptic works in the local language (which is of course native to the youngest generations of Copts born in the country, just as English is for the new generation of Copts in America, thanks be to God), like CDs of the daily prayers of the Agpeya (Coptic Horologion) in French:

"We're" also becoming Italians...

And Austrians...

And Bolivians...

And Kenyans... (this is the Nicene Creed in Luo, a Nilotic language spoken in western Kenya, northern Tanzania, and apparently Sudan):

Today Shubra, tomorrow the world!

And now and always: CHRIST IS RISEN!

As we'd pray in this season in the Italian tasbeha above: Blessed are You indeed, with Your good Father, and the Holy Spirit, for You have risen and saved us. +