Good Friday in Kampala

Below are some pictures of our Good Friday services here at St Nicholas Cathedral. The epitaphion, or tomb of Christ, was very splendid. Actually, to tell the truth, I was even a bit surprised, because usually they don't do so much with flowers here, and in fact there do not seem to be so many flowers around, somewhat contrary to my expectations of an area that used to be a rain forest.

The service was adequately attended, but I wouldn't say packed.

All the services of the entire week are "anticipated"— vespers at 6:00 am and matins at 6:00 pm, backwards of what they should be, and always half a day earlier than their proper chronology. (sigh.) (There's an interesting article by Fr Alkiviadis Calivas at the GOA website which explains how this practice developed.)

For those who know what I'm talking about, we pretty much just followed the order of the Pappadeas Holy Week — Pascha service book, or rather a translation of it into Luganda. Not surprisingly, the third stasis of the Lamentations was sung with great gusto, according to the very memorable melody that has become universal throughout the Orthodox churches.

On the whole, though, this Great Friday service— as all the services of the week— was rather subdued, without a lot of movement or what you might call liturgical "punctuation". This is true the whole year round, in fact. But in another sense, despite the difficulties and challenges, we do the services rather fully, never really skipping anything— although in using Pappadeas' handbook during this week, we follow his rather egregious and extreme editing (for example, his reduction of the number of Old Testament readings at Great Saturday Vespers, from fifteen to three.)

Apparently the service of unction on Wednesday night has in the popular mind become a replacement for the sacrament of confession. The bishop is aware of this as a problem, but he will not allow most priests to hear confessions, as they generally lack a strong theological or pastoral formation.

On the whole, though, this service— as all the services of the week— was rather subdued, without a lot of movement or what you might call liturgical "punctuation". But despite the difficulties and challenges, the services are done rather fully— we don't really skip anything— except for the rather egregious and extreme editing done by Pappadeas (for example, his reduction of the number of Old Testament readings at Great Saturday Vespers, from fifteen to three.)

We do have a lot of room for improvement in singing— they basically use the Greek chant melodies, but the Luganda language is quite different from Greek (it has about 30% more syllables, for one thing), so melodies that were written for metered Greek verse don't really fit, and besides that, no one really knows the chant system. So we are noodling around as best we can from a rather faulty memory of how things should sound. I've been teaching the Slavonic tones, which were made for translation and so work well in any language, and we've had some success with this.



The holy tomb, prepared for the epitaphion.



After the epitaphion is placed in the tomb, the bishop covers it with flowers.



Metropolitan Jonah follows the service.


Prayers before the epitaphion.



The procession with the epitaphion around the church (once).





We re-enter the church by passing under the tomb— mystically dying with Christ and entering with him into the tomb; or dying with him and entering the life of the Kingdom.