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Dear Parish Faithful,
Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!
Perhaps not everyone is aware of a traditional liturgical discipline associated with the paschal season, and that is the practice of not "bending the knee" (kneeling) from Pascha to Pentecost. But the practice actually applies to each and every Sunday of the liturgical year, not simply the paschal season. This was thought to have been a practice important enough to be the subject of one of the canons from the First Ecumenical Council (Nicea 325): "Forasmuch as there are certain persons who kneel on the Lord's Day and in the days of Pentecost, therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere (in every parish), it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God standing."
I was reading about this practice in Sister Vassa's new book, Praying in Time, within which she devotes a section to this theme in one of the book's chapters. This section concludes with the following paragraph that serves as a good explanation behind the practice:
Why are we not to kneel on Sundays? Saint Basil the Great (+379) explains that by standing upright on Sundays, rather than kneeling, we symbolize or re-present with our own bodies the bodily resurrection of the Lord, our having risen from the dead together with him, and seeking "the things above" (On the Holy Spirit 27, cf. Canon 91 of St. Basil the Great). Thus the "kneeling prayers" of Pentecost Sunday, attributed to St. Basil, are not read at the vigil or Vespers or Matins of Pentecost Sunday, but at the Vespers of the following day, Pentecost Monday, so as to avoid kneeling on Sunday.
Even while for practical reasons this Vespers service, with the kneeling prayers of Pentecost Monday, is usually celebrated immediately after the Divine Liturgy on Pentecost Sunday, the liturgical tradition is bending over backwards (or forwards, in this case) to avoid kneeling on a Sunday by placing the kneeling prayers outside the liturgical cycle of Pentecost Sunday and within the Vespers of the next day. (p. 91)
We can apply this liturgical principle and practice to our personal prayer also.
