A tone is not a psalm number. It is the mode in which that week's resurrection hymns are sung — the whole week's Vespers, Matins and Liturgy are set in one tone.

There are eight tones, and they change each week. The cycle opens with the first tone on Thomas Sunday after Pascha and returns to the first every eight weeks; Bright Week itself has no tone of its own. A new tone begins on Saturday evening, with the new church week.

The Psalter is divided into twenty kathismata and, by the usual rule, is read through once a week. Appointed for this day:

This is the usual rule. In Great Lent the Psalter is read twice a week, and the kathismata are divided differently.

Word of the day

As you deal with your soul while it dwells in the body in this world, so it too will deal with you after it leaves the body. If a person has served his body well in this world, denying it no comfort or pleasure and pampering it in every way, by this he has done himself a very bad service for the time after death, for such a person will bring nothing but torments upon his soul.