Category Archives: Pascha

What I Did on Zacchaeus Sunday

church, Lent, Pascha

In the Orthodox Church Lent is a long and sweet, helpful preparation for Easter, Resurrection Sunday, PASCHA! But four weeks before Lent we get to start preparing for the preparation, you might say, by means of four thematic Sundays. I’m so glad Deb wrote about this, better than I could have. But what I would like to mention is that it was on Zacchaeus Sunday, which was yesterday, that I became an official catechumen three years ago.

I had been a sort of unofficial catechumen for about seven years before that, so my official period was not long–just about long enough to get ready for Lent, and then enter into its “joy-creating sorrow” and finally be baptized on Holy Saturday. Every Pascha, indeed every Sunday, I remember that event of fully entering the Church, but I mark my first formal commitment with every Zacchaeus Sunday.

Joy in the Holy Spirit — Pentecost

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Today the church is decorated with green–ferns, birch branches, palm fronds, hanging from the chandelier and draped over everything. Lilies frame the icon that portrays the pouring out of the Holy Spirit 50 days after the Resurrection. The vestments and other cloths are green now as well. This passage from Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World explains why we Orthodox take so much trouble for the sake of the appearance of our temple:

The liturgy [Communion service] is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with Him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole “beauty” of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional” or “useful.” And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is Heaven on earth, according to our Orthodox tradition; it is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned, and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world. In our adult, serious piety we ask for definitions and justifications, and they are rooted in fear–fear of corruption, deviation, “pagan influences,” whatnot. But “he that feareth is not made perfect in love “(I John 4:18). As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will “represent” it and signify it, in art and beauty. And the celebrant of the sacrament of joy will appear in a beautiful [robe], because he
is vested in the glory of the Kingdom….

Today is Pentecost, or Holy Trinity Sunday, so named because all the Persons of the Trinity are remembered–Christ sent the Holy Spirit from the Father. This event is, as our rector reminded us, the seal and crown and joy of Pascha, and our salvation. It is a feast second only to Pascha, to the Resurrection itself, and there is so much to celebrate that we have another Divine Liturgy tomorrow, on Holy Spirit Day.

During the time between Pascha and Pentecost, we withheld the prayer about the Holy Comforter from our daily selections, as we entered into a period of “waiting” for the Spirit to be given. Now its restoration imparts the reality of Pentecost as a historic event which has been given to us in Christ, and we pray:

O Heavenly King,
The Comforter, The Spirit of Truth,
Who art everywhere present and filleth all things,
Treasury of Blessing, and Giver of Life,
Come and abide in us,
And cleanse us from every impurity,
And save our souls, O Good One.

Deathless Life

church, death, Pascha

“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!

Sunday of the Myrrhbearers

church, Pascha

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.