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Sacred Correspondences
Holidays & Festivals

Bright Week

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The week after Orthodox Pascha, kept as one continuous feast day, "Bright" or "Renewal" Week. The royal doors of the iconostasis stand open throughout, no fasting is permitted even on the Wednesday and Friday that are otherwise fast days all year, and the paschal greeting and hymns continue daily. It is the mirror of Holy Week: as that week descended to the tomb, this one prolongs the resurrection.

Facts
Reckoning
Calendar System
Julian (Old Calendar) 1
Date Rule
The week following Pascha 1
Fixed or Movable
Computed from another feast 1
Observance
Observance Type
Feast / celebration 1
Duration
1
Learn More
A Week That Is All One Day

Bright Week is the week following Pascha (Orthodox Easter), and in the Eastern churches it is kept as if it were a single continuous festal day, the "eighth day" that does not end. The fasting rules are entirely suspended, even on the Wednesday and Friday that are normally fast days, and the services keep the full Paschal character throughout, with the greeting "Christ is risen!" exchanged in place of ordinary hellos.

Its most striking feature is that the royal doors of the icon screen, and the deacon's doors, are kept open all week, so that the sanctuary, normally veiled, stands open to view, a visible sign that the resurrection has opened what was closed and that the way to God lies open. The Paschal procession is repeated, and in Greek and Slavic practice bells are rung freely. The week ends on the following Sunday, Thomas Sunday, which recalls the risen Christ's appearance to the doubting apostle. Bright Week is the clearest expression of the Orthodox conviction that Pascha is not one day but the source of a season, indeed of the whole Christian life, kept as unbroken joy.

The One Joyful Week When Weddings Are Still Not Permitted

Despite Bright Week's unbroken festal character and the total suspension of fasting rules throughout it, Orthodox canonical practice generally continues to prohibit the celebration of weddings during the week, a restriction that can seem paradoxical given how thoroughly every other normal restraint, fasting, subdued liturgical tone, ordinary greetings, is set aside for the same seven days, and clergy explaining the rule to couples typically point to the specifically Paschal focus the week is meant to hold without competing celebrations, rather than to any sense that a wedding itself would be inappropriate or unfestive.

The practical effect is that couples planning an Orthodox wedding must schedule around Bright Week much as they would around any of the fasting periods that do restrict weddings, even though Bright Week itself involves no fasting at all, a reminder that the liturgical calendar's restrictions on weddings track the specific character and focus the church wants a given period to have rather than simply following a single rule that austerity permits weddings and festivity does not.

Bright Week also has its own particular bread: the artos, a large loaf marked with the image of the resurrection or the cross, is blessed at the Paschal liturgy and kept before the icon of the risen Christ throughout the week, carried in procession each day, before being broken and distributed to the faithful on Bright Saturday, the loaf standing through the week as a further visible sign, alongside the open royal doors, that the risen Christ remains present among the gathered church.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Bright Week prolongs the resurrection through the whole week after Pascha.

Belongs to Tradition

Found In

Bright Week follows Pascha, fixed by the Julian paschal rules.

Timing Rules

Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. EasterView the Source
The Orthodox Church
Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware), Penguin Books, 1993Bright Week and the open royal doorsView the Source
Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations
J. Gordon Melton (editor), ABC-CLIO, 2011Renewal Week observanceView the Source
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