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Last
Updated on
March 18, 2007
The
Orthodox Church: A Visual Journey
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| A little before
midnight on the Blessed Sabbath the Nocturne
service is chanted. The celebrant goes to the tomb and removes the
winding-sheet. He carries it through the royal doors and places it on the
altar table where it remains for forty days until the day of Ascension.
At midnight the Easter procession begins. The
people leave the church building singing: The angels in heaven, 0 Christ our
Savior, sing of Thy resurrection. Make us on earth also worthy to hymn Thee
with a pure heart.
The procession circles the church building and returns
to the closed doors of the front of the church. This procession of the
Christians on Easter night recalls the original baptismal
procession from the darkness and death of this world to the night and
the life of the Kingdom of God. It is the procession of the
holy passover, from death unto life, from earth
unto heaven, from this age to the age to come which will never end. Before
the closed doors of the church building, the resurrection of Christ is
announced. Sometimes the Gospel is read which tells of the empty tomb. The
celebrant intones the blessing to the "holy, consubstantial, life-creating
and undivided Trinity." The Easter troparion is
sung for the first time, together with the verses of Psalm 68 which will
begin all of the Church services during the Easter season.
Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered; let
those who hate him flee from before his face!
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon
those in the tombs bestowing life. (Troparion)
This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in
it!
The people re-enter the church building and continue
the service of Easter Matins which is entirely
sung.
The canon hymns of Christ's resurrection. ascribed
to St John of Damascus, are chanted with the troparion of the feast as the
constantly recurring refrain. The building is decorated with flowers and
lights. The vestments are the bright robes of the resurrection. The Easter
icon stands in the center of the church showing Christ destroying the gates
of hell and freeing Adam and Eve from the captivity of death. It is the
image of the Victor "trampling down death by his own death." There is the
continual singing and censing of the icons and the people, with the constant
proclamation of the celebrant: Christ is risen!
The faithful continually respond: Indeed he is risen!
It is the day of resurrection ! Let us be
illumined for the feast! Pascha! The Pascha of the Lord! From death unto
life, and from earth unto heaven has Christ our God led us! Singing the
song of victory: Christ is risen from the dead! (First Ode of the Easter
Canon)
Following the canon, the paschal verses are sung, and
at the conclusion of the Easter Matins, the Easter Hours
are also sung. In general, nothing is simply read in the Church services of
Easter: everything is fully sung with the joyful melodies of the feast.
At the end of the Hours, before the Divine Liturgy, the celebrant solemnly
proclaims the famous Paschal Sermon of St. John
Chrysostom. This sermon is an invitation to all of the faithful to
forget their sins and to join fully in the feast of the resurrection of
Christ. Taken literally, the sermon is the formal invitation offered to all
members of the Church to come and to receive Holy Communion, partaking of
Christ, the Passover Lamb, whose table is now being set in the midst of the
Church. In some parishes the sermon is literally obeyed, and all of the
faithful receive the eucharistic gifts of the Passover Supper of Easter
night.
The Easter Divine Liturgy begins immediately with
the singing once more of the festal troparion with the verses of Psalm 68.
Special psalm verses also comprise the antiphons of the liturgy, through
which the faithful praise and glorify the salvation of God:
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Sing of his name, give glory to his praise.
Let all the earth worship Thee and praise Thee! Let it praise Thy name,
0 most High!
That we may know Thy way upon the earth and Thy salvation among all
nations.
Let the people thank Thee, O God! Let all the people give thanks to
Thee.
The troparion is repeated over and over again. The
baptismal line from Galatians replaces the Thrice-Holy Hymn. The epistle
reading is the first nine verses of the Book of Acts. The gospel reading is
the first seventeen verses of the Gospel of St. John. The proclamation of
the Word of God takes the faithful back again to the beginning, and
announces God's creation and recreation of the world through the living
Word of God, his Son Jesus Christ.
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was
with God and the Word was God ... all things were made through him ...
In him was life and the life was the light of men. ...
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth. ..
we have beheld his glory, glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father,
and from his fullness have we all received grace upon grace. ... (John
1:1-17).
The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom continues, crowned
in holy communion with the Passover Lamb at his banquet table in God's
Kingdom. Again and again the troparion of the Resurrection is sung while the
faithful partake of him "who was dead and is alive again" (Rev
2:8).In the Orthodox Church the feast of Easter is officially called
Pascha, the word which means the
Passover. It is the new Passover of the new and
everlasting covenant foretold by the prophets of old. It is the eternal
Passover from death to life and from earth to heaven. It is the
Day of the Lord proclaimed by God's holy prophets,
"the day which the Lord has made" for his judgment over all creation, the
day of His final and everlasting victory. It is the Day of the Kingdom of
God, tile day "which has no night" for "its light is the Lamb" (Rev
21:22-25).
The celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church, therefore, is once again
not merely an historical reenactment of the event of Christ's Resurrection
as narrated in the gospels. It is not a dramatic representation of the first
Easter morning." There is no "sunrise service" since the Easter Matins and
the Divine Liturgy are celebrated together in the first dark hours of the
first day of the week in order to give men the experience of the "new
creation" of the world, and to allow them to enter mystically into the
New Jerusalem which shines eternally with the
glorious light of Christ, overcoming the perpetual night of evil and
destroying the darkness of this mortal and sinful world:
Shine! Shine! O New Jerusalem! The glory of the
Lord has shone upon you! Exult and be glad O Zion! Be radiant 0 Pure
Theotokos, in the Resurrection of your son!
This is one of the main Easter hymns in the Orthodox
Church. It is inspired by Isaiah's prophecy and the final chapters of the
Book of Revelation, for it is exactly tile
New Creation, the New Jerusalem,
the Heavenly City, the Kingdom
of God, the Day of the Lord, the
Marriage Feast of the Lamb with his Bride which is
celebrated and realized and experienced in the Holy Spirit on the Holy Night
of Easter in the Orthodox Church.
 | The
Resurrection of
Jesus Christ: very late Saturday night
(usually midnight) |
|
Agape
Vespers:
Proclamation of the Gospel to the
four corners of the world, symbolized by the reading of the Gospel in
various languages from the four corners of the Church building: Sunday
afternoon
|
Pentecostarion (Paschaltide)
| Bright Week: Week following Pascha
|
| Saint
Thomas: 1st
Sunday after Pascha(7 days) |
| The Holy
Myrrhbearers: 2nd Sunday after Pascha(14 days) |
| The Paralytic: 3rd Sunday after
Pascha(21 days) |
| The Samaritan Woman (Photini):
4th Sunday after Pascha(28 days) |
| The Blind Man: 5th Sunday after
Pascha(35 days) |
| The Ascension of Jesus Christ: 39 days
after Pascha |
| The Fathers of the
First Ecumenical Council:
6th Sunday after Pascha(42 days) |
|
Pentecost,
when the Holy Spirit
descended on the Apostles, and the
Christian Church began: 7th Sunday after Pascha(49 days)
|
|
All Saints:
8th Sunday after Pascha(56 days) |
The English word "Easter" is not a biblical word. It is
thought to be a translation of the name of the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess, "Eostre".
In any case, it is an English word which is used today to translate the Greek
term 'Pascha', which translates the Hebrew term for 'Passover'.
The Christian Church transformed the Jewish Passover, which commemorated the
freeing of the Hebrew people from Egyptian bondage into a feast which
commemorated the death and resurrection of Christ which freed humanity from the
bondage of death, sin and evil.
We do not have a command from Jesus to celebrate the
Paschal Feast. But the Bible clearly indicates the New Testament belief that
Christ is the New Pascha for believers in Him, and that this is to be
celebrated by Christians:
"For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been
sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival ..." (1 Corinthians
5:7).
Thus the celebration of Christ's Resurrection became
the first Christian Feast - the Christian Pascha.
Great Lent
In the life of the Church of Christ there are many
institutes created and maintained to meet the needs of the people of God - the
Ecclesia. Among these is the Great Lent which falls within the year-cycle
of the life of the Church before Pascha ('Easter'). Great Lent is the
period of time for self-examination by the believer; of putting on the spiritual
armour of the Militant Church; of applying the riches of prayer and
almsgiving; of adopting deeply the meaning of repentance; of atonement and
reconciliation with God Almighty.
The Triodion
The 50 days before Pascha, known as a part of the
period of the Triodion (meaning three odes) are the period for
strengthening faith in the Lord. The means are well-known to people of spiritual
experience. They are repentance, which means to change from indifference to full
devotion; prayer, which is considered the soul of faith, and through which faith
emerges from theory into practice, and self-control, which governs our
relationships with our neighbor. These means are practical indicators of our
vivid faith in God. With this preparation we are invited to enter the sanctuary
of
Holy Week, not as
spectators, but as participants in the commemoration and enactment of the divine
Acts that changed the world. A Christian must always be well-trained and
well-armed to fight against those who try to corrupt his spirit and take away
his freedom. The Christian must keep his own spiritual kingdom intact and his
freedom of religion and uprightness vivid in order to be a part of the Kingdom
of God, where the compassions of the Lord and His Resurrection will be
experienced. There is no other place where the Kingdom of God can be expanded
except the heart of man; and there is no other gate whereby we can enter the
Kingdom but that of "repentance". This was the proclamation of the new era of
Jesus Christ, who said:
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"
(Matthew 03:02).
Easter is the celebration of the day of the
Resurrection. It is the greatest and oldest feast in the Christian calendar.
Especially for the Orthodox, there is no greater feast than Easter including the
feast of the Nativity (Christmas), which in the Western Church appears to be the
chief feast of their ecclesiastical calendar. The reasons for the preeminence of
Easter among the Orthodox are many, all based on a particular passage of St.
Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians,
"if Christ has not been raised then our
preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (I Corinthians 15:14).
Characteristic of the
importance of the Resurrection for the Orthodox is the fact that Easter is also
called in Greek 'Lampri', the brightest day of all. The Resurrection light that
is brought to the Orthodox home from the midnight service of the Resurrection is
taken to be the visible symbol of a new life in the resurrected Christ, a life
of joy after the sorrow of the Cross. And though the Passion is observed with
the depth and significance it befits the supreme sacrifice of Christ, it is His
Resurrection that seals the redemption issuing from the Cross. Without it, the
Orthodox feel, the divide drama would have remained unfulfilled in terms of the
experience of human life by which a triumphant katharsis must follow all
sacrifices including that on Golgotha. Every Sunday Liturgy of the year is
devoted to the Resurrection rather than to the suffering Christ. Hence the
joyful tone of the Orthodox Eucharist and the underlying victory against the
forces of evil implied in the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. In this
respect, the etymology of Pascha claimed by some as deriving from the Greek verb
'paschein' (to suffer) is erroneous. The name Pascha is merely the approximate
rendering by sound of the Hebrew name for Passover.
A long period of fasting preparation precedes the week
of Passion, the Great Lent and the Holy Week leads to Good Friday. All together
lead to the joy of Resurrection which lasts liturgically for forty whole days
after it to the day of the Ascension of the Resurrected Christ. In the ancient
Church, those who were preparing to be accepted in the life of Christ by Baptism
were allowed to attend the service of Saturday night and were baptized early on
Easter day and received Holy Communion. Homes and entire towns were illuminated
with the light of Resurrection taken from the celebrant after he proclaimed
Christ resurrected at the Saturday midnight service before the Paschal Liturgy
would begin. The famous Orthodox proclamatory hymn, 'Christ is risen from the
dead by death trampling on death....', remains for the Orthodox not only the
crown jewel of the entire Orthodox hymnology, but also the symbol of national
liberation of more than one of the Orthodox countries. The Saturday night vigil
of the early Church has been retained by the Orthodox Church while in the West
it was moved first back to the afternoon and later to the morning of Holy
Saturday so that the first Easter Mass came to be celebrated on Saturday. But
since 1950 the Orthodox and ancient custom of holding the first Liturgy of
Easter at midnight on Saturday - Sunday is being gradually restored in the Roman
Church.
|
 
Christ is Risen
Indeed He Has!
Paschal Dates |
Paschal Dates
|
Year |
Great Lent Begins |
Pascha
|
Western "Easter"
|
|
2004 |
February 23 |
April 11 |
April 11 |
|
2005 |
March 14 |
May 1 |
March 27 |
|
2006 |
March 6 |
April 23 |
April 16 |
|
2007 |
February 19 |
April 8 |
April 8 |
|
2008 |
March 10 |
April 27 |
March 23 |
|
2009 |
March 2 |
April 19 |
April 12 |
|
2010 |
February 15 |
April 4 |
April 4 |
All Dates are according to the Civil Calendar
|
