Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

The Liturgy of Great Lent’s weekdays, when no full Liturgy is served: Vespers, with communion from gifts consecrated at the Liturgy of the Sunday before. The Council in Trullo appointed it for the weekdays of Lent; parishes keep it chiefly on Wednesdays and Fridays and on the first three days of Holy Week, and it was meant to be served in the evening, so that the faithful came to communion at the end of a day of fasting. Its most remembered moments are its own: the priest lifting a candle to the people with the words, the Light of Christ illumines all; the psalm let my prayer be set forth as incense, sung with prostrations; and the silent Great Entrance, while the choir sings now the powers of heaven serve invisibly with us. The Greek tradition attributes it to St Gregory the Dialogist; scholars place its shape in the Church of Constantinople in the centuries around him.