2023-1224 Divine Liturgy & Nativity Eve Vespers

On this day, Christmas Eve, we celebrate the Divine Liturgy at 9:30 AM followed by the Vespers with the special lessons leading into the feast of the Nativity. The services of Holy Trinity Cathedral, a parish of the Orthodox Church in America, are prayed in English. All are welcome! God willing, we will also live-stream this service on Youtube for those physically unable to get to divine services this weekend:    / @holytrinitycathedralsf   (We normally stream on Facebook but that connection is having technical difficulty today.) We begin to enter into the joy of the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ! Vespers this afternoon inaugurates the celebration of the feast itself with the formal beginning of the liturgical day of Christmas. The tone of this celebration is given by the five stichera on "Lord, I call." What they really are is an explosion of joy for the gift of Christ's Incarnation which is now fulfilled! Eight biblical readings show that Christ is the fulfillment of all prophecies, that His Kingdom is the Kingdom "of all ages," that all human history finds its meaning in it, and the entire cosmos its center. This joy culminates in the bringing out of the festal icon into the middle of the church.