Pascha (Easter)
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith; receive ye all the riches of
loving-kindness.
(Sermon of St John Chrysostom, read at Paschal
Matins)
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the center of the
Christian faith. St Paul says that if Christ is not raised from the
dead, then our preaching and faith are in vain (I Cor. 15:14). Indeed,
without the resurrection there would be no Christian preaching or
faith. The disciples of Christ would have remained the broken and
hopeless band which the Gospel of John describes as being in hiding
behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. They went nowhere and
preached nothing until they met the risen Christ, the doors being shut
(John 20: 19). Then they touched the wounds of the nails and the spear;
they ate and drank with Him. The resurrection became the basis of
everything they said and did (Acts 2-4): ". . . for a spirit has not
flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24:39).
The resurrection reveals Jesus of Nazareth as not only the expected
Messiah of Israel, but as the King and Lord of a new Jerusalem: a new
heaven and a new earth.
Then I asw a new heaven and a new earth. . . the holy city, new
Jerusalem. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying "Behold,
the dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and
they shall be his people. . . He will wipe away every tear from their
eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor
crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away (Rev.
21:1-4).
In His death and resurrection, Christ defeats the last enemy, death,
and thereby fulfills the mandate of His Father to subject all things
under His feet (I Cor. 15:24-26).
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and
wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing (Rev. 5: 12)
THE FEAST OF FEASTS
The Christian faith is celebrated in the liturgy of the Church. True
celebration is always a living participation. It is not a mere
attendance at services. It is communion in the power of the event being
celebrated. It is God's free gift of joy given to spiritual men as a
reward for their self-denial. It is the fulfillment of spiritual and
physical effort and preparation. The resurrection of Christ, being the
center of the Christian faith, is the basis of the Church's liturgical
life and the true model for all celebration. This is the chosen and
holy day, first of sabbaths, king and lord of days, the feast of
feasts, holy day of holy days. On this day we bless Christ forevermore
(Irmos 8, Paschal Canon).
PREPARATION
Twelve weeks of preparation precede the "feast of feasts." A long
journey which includes five prelenten Sundays, six weeks of Great Lent
and finally Holy Week is made. The journey moves from the self-willed
exile of the prodigal son to the grace-filled entrance into the new
Jerusalem, coming down as a bride beautifully adorned for her husband
(Rev. 21:2) Repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, prayer, fasting,
almsgiving, and study are the means by which this long journey is made.
Focusing on the veneration of the Cross at its midpoint, the lenten
voyage itself reveals that the joy of the resurrection is achieved only
through the Cross. "Through the cross joy has come into all the world,"
we sing in one paschal hymn. And in the paschal troparion, we repeat
again and again that Christ has trampled down death - by death! St Paul
writes that the name of Jesus is exalted above every name because He
first emptied Himself, taking on the lowly form of a servant and being
obedient even to death on the Cross (Phil. 2:5-11). The road to the
celebration of the resurrection is the self-emptying crucifixion of
Lent. Pascha is the passover from death to life.
Yesterday I was buried with Thee, 0 Christ. Today I arise with Thee in
Thy resurrection. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee: Glorify me with
Thee, 0 Savior, in Thy kingdom (Ode 3, Paschal Canon).
THE PROCESSION
The divine services of the night of Pascha commence near midnight of
Holy Saturday. At the Ninth Ode of the Canon of Nocturn, the priest,
already vested in his brightest robes, removes the Holy Shroud from the
tomb and carries it to the altar table, where it remains until the
leave-taking of Pascha. The faithful stand in darkness. Then, one by
one, they light their candles from the candle held by the priest and
form a great procession out of the church. Choir, servers, priest and
people, led by the bearers of the cross, banners, icons and Gospel
book, circle the church. The bells are rung incessantly and the angelic
hymn of the resurrection is chanted.
The procession comes to a stop before the principal doors of the
church. Before the closed doors the priest and the people sing the
troparion of Pascha, "Christ is risen from the dead. . .", many tImes.
Even before entenng the church the priest and people exchange the
paschal greeting: "Christ is nsen! Indeed He is risen!" This segment of
the paschal services is extremely important. It preserves in the
expenence of the Church the primitive accounts of the resurrection of
Christ as recorded in the Gospels. The angel rolled away the stone from
the tomb not to let a biologically revived but physically entrapped
Christ walk out, but to reveal that "He is not here; for He has risen,
as He said" (Matt. 28:6).
In the paschal canon we sing:
Thou didst arise, 0 Christ, and yet the tomb remained sealed, as at Thy
birth the Virgin's womb remained unharmed; and Thou has opened for us
the gates of paradise (Ode 6).
Finally, the procession of light and song in the darkness of night, and
the thunderous proclamation that, indeed, Christ is risen, fulfill the
words of the Evangelist John: "The light shines in darkness, and the
darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).
The doors are opened and the faithful re-enter. The church is bathed in
light and adorned with flowers. It is the heavenly bride and the symbol
of the empty tomb:
Bearing life and more fruitful than paradise Brighter than any royal
chamber, Thy tomb, 0 Christ, is the fountain or our resurrection
(Paschal Hours).
MATINS
Matins commences immediately. The risen Christ is glorified in the
singing of the beautiful canon of St John of Damascus. The paschal
greeting is repeatedly exchanged. Near the end of Matins the paschal
verses are sung. They relate the entire narrative of the Lord's
resurrection. They conclude with the words calling us to actualize
among each other the forgiveness freely given to all by God:
This is the day of resurrection. Let us be illumined by the feast. Let
us embrace each other. Let us call "brothers" even those who hate us,
And forgive all by the resurrection. . .
The sermon of St John Chrysostom is then read by the celebrant. The
sermon was originally composed as a baptismal instruction. It is
retained by the Church in the paschal services because everything about
the night of Pascha recalls the Sacrament of Baptism: the language and
general terminology of the liturgical texts, the specific hymns, the
vestment color, the use of candles and the great procession itself. Now
the sermon invites us to a great reaffirmation of our baptism: to union
with Christ in the receiving of Holy Communion.
If any man is devout and loves God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant
triumphal feast. . . the table is fully laden; feast you all
sumptuously. . . the calf is fatted, let no one go hungry away. . .
THE DIVINE LITURGY
The sermon announces the imminent beginning of the Divine Liturgy. The
altar table is fully laden with the divine food: the Body and Blood of
the risen and glorified Christ. No one is to go away hungry. The
service books are very specific in saying that only he who partakes of
the Body and Blood of Christ eats the true Pascha. The Divine Liturgy,
therefore, normally follows immediately after paschal Matins. Foods
from which the faithful have been asked to abstain during the lenten
journey are blessed and eaten only after the Divine Liturgy.
THE DAY WITHOUT EVENING
Pascha is the inauguration of a new age. It reveals the mystery of the
eighth day. It is our taste, in this age, of the new and unending day
of the Kingdom of God. Something of this new and unending day is
conveyed to us in the length of the paschal services, in the repetition
of the paschal order for all the services of Bright Week, and in the
special paschal features retained in the services for the forty days
until Ascension. Forty days are, as it were, treated as one day.
Together they comprise the symbol of the new time in which the Church
lives and toward which she ever draws the faithful, from one degree of
glory to another.
0 Christ, great and most holy Pascha. 0 Wisdom, Word and Power of God,
grant that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never-ending
day of Thy kingdom (Ninth Ode, Paschal Canon).
The V. Rev. Paul Lazor New York, 1977
***
Holy Week: A Liturgical Explanation for the
Days of Holy Week
MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY: THE END These three days, which
the Church
calls Great and Holy have within the liturgical development of the Holy
Week a very definite purpose. They place all its celebrations in the
perspective of End ; they remind us of the eschatological meaning of
Pascha. So often Holy Week is considered one of the "beautiful
traditions" or "customs," a self-evident "part" of our calendar. We
take it for granted and enjoy it as a cherished annual event which we
have "observed" since childhood, we admire the beauty of its services,
the pageantry of its rites and, last but not least, we like the fuss
about the paschal table. And then, when all this is done we resume our
normal life. But do we understand that when the world rejected its
Savior, when "Jesus began to be sorrowful and very heavy... and his
soul was exceedingly sorrowful even unto death," when He died on the
Cross, "normal life" came to its end and is no longer possible. For
there were "normal" men who shouted "Crucify Him [" who spat at Him and
nailed Him to the Cross.
And they hated and killed Him precisely
because He was troubling their normal life. It was indeed a perfectly
"normal" world which preferred darkness and death to light and life....
By the death of Jesus the "normal" world, and "normal" life were
irrevocably condemned. Or rather they revealed their true and abnormal
inability to receive the Light, the terrible power of evil in them.
"Now is the Judgment of this world" (John 12:31). The Pascha of Jesus
signified its end to "this world" and it has been at its end since
then. This end can last for hundreds of centuries this does not alter
the nature of time in which we live as the "last time." "The fashion of
this world passeth away..." (I Cor. 7:31).
Pascha means
passover, passage. The feast of Passover was for the Jews the annual
commemoration of their whole history as salvation, and of salvation as
passage from the slavery of Egypt into freedom, from exile into the
promised land. It was also the anticipation of the ultimate passage -
into the Kingdom of God. And Christ was the fulfillment of Pascha. He
performed the ultimate passage: from death into life, from this "old
world" into the new world into the new time of the Kingdom. And he
opened the possibility of this passage to us. Living in "this world" we
can already be "not of this world," i.e. be free from slavery to death
and sin, partakers of the "world to come." But for this we must also
perform our own passage, we must condemn the old Adam in us, we must
put on Christ in the baptismal death and have our true life hidden in
God with Christ, in the "world to come...."
And thus Easter is
not an annual commemoration, solemn and beautiful, of a past event. It
is this Event itself shown, given to us, as always efficient, always
revealing our world, our time, our life as being at their end, and
announcing the Beginning of the new life.... And the function of the
three first days of Holy Week is precisely to challenge us with this
ultimate meaning of Pascha and to prepare us to the understanding and
acceptance of it.
1. This eschatological (which means
ultimate, decisive, final) challenge is revealed, first, in the common
troparion of these days:
Troparion - Tone 8
Behold the
Bridegroom comes at midnight, And blessed is the servant whom He shall
find watching, And again unworthy is the servant whom He shall find
heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with
sleep, Lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the
Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, Holy, Holy, are You, O our
God! Through the Theotokos have mercy on us!
Midnight is the
moment when the old day comes to its end and a new day begins. It is
thus the symbol of the time in which we live as Christians. For, on the
one hand, the Church is still in this world, sharing in its weaknesses
and tragedies. Yet, on the other hand, her true being is not of this
world, for she is the Bride of Christ and her mission is to announce
and to reveal the coming of the Kingdom and of the new day. Her life is
a perpetual watching and expectation, a vigil pointed at the dawn of
this new day. But we know how strong is still our attachment to the
"old day," to the world with its passions and sins. We know how deeply
we still belong to "this world." We have seen the light, 'We know
Christ, we have heard about the peace and joy of the new life in Him,
and yet the world holds us in its slavery. This weakness, this constant
betrayal of Christ, this incapacity to give the totality of our love to
the only true object of love are wonderfully expressed in the
exapostilarion of these three days:
"Thy Bridal Chamber I see
adorned, O my Savior And I have no wedding garment that I may enter, O
Giver of life, enlighten the vesture of my soul And save me."
2.
The same theme develops further in the Gospel readings of these days.
First of all, the entire text of the four Gospels (up to John 13: 31)
is read at the Hours (1, 3, 6 and 9th). This recapitulation shows that
the Cross is the climax of the whole life and ministry of Jesus, the
Key to their proper understanding. Everything in the Gospel leads to
this ultimate hour of Jesus and everything is to be understood in its
light. Then, each service has its special Gospel lesson
On
Tuesday: At Matins: Matthew 22: 15-23, 39. Condemnation of Pharisees,
i.e. of the blind and hypocritical religion, of those who think they
are the leaders of man and the light of the world, but who in fact
"shut up the Kingdom of heaven to men."
At the Presanctified
Liturgy: Matthew 24: 36-26, 2. The End again and the parables of the
End: the ten wise virgins who had enough oil in their lamps and the ten
foolish ones who were not admitted to the bridal banquet; the parable
of ten talents ". . . Therefore be ye also ready, for in such an hour
as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." And, finally the Last Judgment.
3.These Gospel lessons are explained and elaborated in the
hymnology of these days: the stichiras and the triodia (short canons of
three odes each sung at Matins). One warning, one exhortation runs
through all of them: the end and the judgment are approaching, let us
prepare for them: '"
"Behold, O my soul, the Master has
conferred on thee a talent Receive the gift with fear; Lend to him who
gave; distribute to the poor And acquire for thyself thy Lord as thy
Friend; That when He shall come in glory, Thou mayest stand on His
right hand And hear His blessed voice: Enter, my servant, into the joy
of thy Lord." (Tuesday Matins)
4. Throughout the whole Lent
the two books of the Old Testament read at Vespers were Genesis and
Proverbs. With the beginning of Holy Week they are replaced by Exodus
and Job. Exodus is the story of Israel's liberation from Egyptian
slavery, of their Passover. It prepares us for the understanding of
Christ's exodus to His Father, of His fulfillment of the whole history
of salvation. Job, the Sufferer, is the Old Testament icon of Christ.
This reading announces the great mystery of Christ's sufferings,
obedience and sacrifice.
5. The liturgical structure of these
three days is still of the Lenten type. It includes, therefore, the
prayer of St Ephrem the Syrian with prostrations, the augmented reading
of the Psalter, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts and the Lenten
liturgical chant. We are still in the time of repentance for repentance
alone makes us partakers of the Pascha of Our Lord, opens to us the
doors of the Paschal banquet. And then, on Great and Holy Wednesday, as
the last Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is about to be completed,
after the Holy Gifts have been removed from the altar, the priest reads
for the last time the Prayer of St Ephrem. At this moment, the
preparation comes to an end. The Lord summons us now to His Last
Supper.
by THE VERY REV. ALEXANDER SCHMEMANN
***
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