The Midnight Cry

The heart of Pascha is the midnight service. In darkness the faithful gather; the priest brings out a single flame from the sanctuary and the light spreads candle to candle through the whole church; a procession goes around the outside of the building, re-enacting the coming to the empty tomb, and returns to the proclamation "Christ is risen!", answered "Truly he is risen!" (in Greek, Christos anesti / Alithos anesti), a greeting exchanged among the Orthodox through the following weeks.

The Paschal Homily of John Chrysostom is read, calling all, those who fasted and those who did not, to the feast; the long Lenten fast is broken, often with the red eggs whose colour stands for the blood of Christ and whose shell, cracked, for the broken tomb, and with festal foods such as the Greek tsoureki or Russian kulich and paskha. The exchange of light, greeting and food makes the resurrection a shared bodily event rather than only a doctrine, and the following Bright Week continues the celebration with the church's royal doors kept open.