“When Thou, the Deathless Life, didst go down to death, then didst Thou slay hell by the lightning flash of Thy Divinity. And when Thou didst raise the dead from the lower world, all the powers of Heaven cried aloud: Christ our God, Giver of Life, glory to Thee.”
-From the Troparion, Sunday of the Myrrhbearers
May God slay all vestiges of death and hell in us, by the same power that raised Christ from the dead. Christ is risen!
Today in the Orthodox Church we remember those women who came to the tomb to care for the body of our Lord. They teach us to honor the dead; I will write more about this another day.
And they were mightily blessed for their faith and good works, as the angel appeared to them first and gave them the wonderful news that “Christ is risen!” Indeed He is risen.
My own patron saint is Joanna, one of these women, who twice teaches me to care for the dead, as she is reported to have used her connections as the wife of Herod’s steward to recover the head of John the Baptist so that it could be buried properly.
It was a great joy to attend Vespers tonight and hear the Paschal hymns again, in addition to the sweet and sad hymn pertaining to Good Friday beginning, “Joseph and Nicodemus took Thee down from the tree….” As these men also cared for Christ’s body after the crucifixion, they are commemorated today along with the myrrhbearers. Joseph of Arimathea bought 100 pounds of spices, enough for a king, to anoint the body of Jesus. He gave the tomb that he had bought for his own burial, and these men probably had to pay a price to the government officials as well, in order to obtain the body. All this I heard in the homily tonight, which focused on the fact that even if Joseph and Nicodemus were secret disciples before Christ’s death, they were nothing like that afterward.
While shopping at the supermarket this week I came upon a package of these darling quail eggs. Grown commercially, of course, but still so Spring-y I had to bring them home and take their picture, even if I don’t do another thing with them.
It is a wax-resist process. You apply your design with wax, and in multiple dips in the jars of dye the eggshell takes on the color where there is no wax. In the end you use the candle to melt off the wax and reveal the layers of the design.
Another egg-dyeing process is what I helped with today at church, to prepare red eggs that are traditionally given out to the whole congregation on Pascha night. We boiled and dyed these at the same time in one red bath, but then decided that they weren’t red enough, so we dipped them in the bowl of stronger food coloring.
Gladsome Lights 