The Raising That Stands Between

Lazarus Saturday falls on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, and in the Orthodox calendar it stands, with Palm Sunday, as a joyful hinge between the end of Great Lent and the beginning of Holy Week, belonging fully to neither. It commemorates the raising of Lazarus of Bethany from the dead, recounted in John's Gospel as the sign that most directly precipitates the plot against Jesus and, in Christian reading, a foreshadowing of his own resurrection a week later.

The day's hymns call Lazarus's raising the "common resurrection" confirmed before the passion, and it is one of the few Saturdays on which the resurrectional character of the eucharist is kept in Lent. In some traditions it is a day for baptisms and carries its own foods and customs, such as the spiced Lazarus breads (lazarakia) shaped like a wrapped figure. Placed just before the entry into Jerusalem, it lets the Orthodox move into the sorrow of Holy Week having first affirmed the power over death that the week's events will vindicate, a deliberate ordering that keeps hope in view before the passion begins.