Holy Pascha—The Feast of All Feasts

The foundation of our Christian Faith is the empty tomb of Christ. As St. Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:15, 17). The Christian assurance is that death has been vanquished through Christ's death on the Cross and that the way to heaven has been opened by our Lord Jesus. Although all human beings must experience death, this “first death” does not have the last word. Through Christ's resurrection, death has lost its sting, its permanence; it has been transfigured into sleep. When Jesus rose from the dead early Sunday morning over two thousand years ago, He ended the undefeated reign of death. Since that glorious day, Jesus bestows everlasting life on all those who believe in Him and become His disciples through holy baptism. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said: “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His” (Rom. 6:4-5).

This is why we call the feast of Jesus's resurrection Pascha. Jesus fulfills the Old Testament feast of Passover by becoming THE Lamb of God to end all other “Passover” sacrifices. Death after Christ's resurrection is the ultimate pass-over to eternal life. Christ's historical resurrection becomes the centerpiece of our entire Church Year. Every Divine Liturgy is a mini-Pascha. All other feasts in the life of the Church receive their essential meaning from our Lord's resurrection. We spend over fifty days every year preparing for the Feast of Pascha, and then we stay in this Feast of Paschal glory for forty days, reminding one another of this Christian fact: Christ is risen! Truly He is risen! “O death where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Death is swallowed up in victory!” (1 Cor. 15:55, 54)

Our Orthodox Church offers us three distinct but interwoven periods to prepare us for our greatest and most significant feast day: Holy Pascha. The first period is the 40-day season of Great Lent. The second period is this transition weekend of the Saturday of Lazarus and Palm Sunday. The final period is Holy Week, which culminates with Great and Holy Pascha.

Jesus's entry into Jerusalem reveals a contrast in perspectives. On the one hand, most Jewish citizens of Jerusalem looked upon Jesus as a hopeful deliverer. They greeted Him with palms and garments of clothing, shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” They wanted Jesus to free them from the oppression of Roman tyranny. From this narrow and temporal perspective, they would be greatly disappointed. In less than a week's time, their hopeful king would be crucified by the Roman government.

On the other hand, Jesus, as the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords, saw this last visit to Jerusalem as the beginning of the end of all tyranny and oppression. His battle was never against flesh and blood— against the Romans or even the Jewish religious leaders—but “against the principalities, against the powers, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, Who emptied Himself in humility and condescension in becoming a man, enters the Holy City of Jerusalem to suffer to end all suffering, to embrace sorrow to end all sorrow, to endure pain that all pain may eventually cease, to accept rejection that Heaven may accept the Faithful, to obey to overcome disobedience and sin, to love that it may triumph over hatred, and to die that death may be vanquished. The New Adam comes to Jerusalem to willingly ascend the Cross in order to transform it from the worst form of capital punishment into the ultimate trophy and symbol of perfect love and victory.

Yes, Jesus accepts the expressions of misunderstood hope and desperation as He rides on the foal of a donkey, because He knows that in a week's time the ultimate enemies of the Jews and all mankind—sin, death and the devil—will be utterly defeated. We too cry out “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” but we do so with much greater understanding. We live in the age of the Church! We live Christ's victory! We are in this world, but not of this world, already citizens of the Kingdom. “Christ is risen, and the devil is overthrown. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.” (St. John Chrysostom's Paschal Homily) Even today, we already know that all our true enemies have been crushed under our Lord's feet!

Lazarus Saturday

Celebrated on March 25th

St. Mary lived in the sixth century. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt of Christian parents. She herself was baptized as a child, but left both her home and her Christian faith. For seventeen years, Mary lived a deeply sinful life of harlotry and wickedness. While the Church recognizes this part of her life, she is recognized far more for her deep repentance and for the forgiveness and mercy God bestowed on her through her heartfelt return to Him.

Mary came to herself while visiting the city of Jerusalem. She was prevented three times from entering the church of the Holy Sepulcher. When she realized her unworthiness, the gravity of her sinful life pierced her heart. She turned to the Panaghia for help, and she understood that repentance was her road back to God. After a contrite prayer and plea for forgiveness, Mary was granted to enter into the holy church and reverence the precious and life-giving Cross of our Lord. Afterward, she made her way to a monastery on the edge of the wilderness of the Jordan, confessed her sins, received Holy Communion, and set out in solitude to live out her repentance in the wilderness beyond the Jordan.

With only the clothes on her back and three loaves of bread, Mary went into the deepest parts of the desert. There she lived an extreme ascetic life of deep prayer, long vigils, and intense fasting. For the first seventeen years of her solitary life, she had to do fierce spiritual battle with the demons of her past, which constantly tempted her to return to her formal wayward life. Night and day she cried out unceasingly to the Lord for help. Her warfare was unseen, spiritual, and fought between her mind and her heart, fleeing impassioned thoughts and memories. What we see in this unseen warfare of St. Mary is also what we are expected to wage in our own lives. Providentially, after forty-seven years of asceticism, prayer, and repentance, she finally met Elder Zossima and told him her life story. By this time, she had reached the heights of holiness and possessed the grace-filled gifts of clairvoyance, unceasing prayer, uninterrupted peace, and an “angelic” state of existence. She received Holy Communion one last time from the hands of Elder Zossima and then fell asleep into the loving embrace of our All-merciful Lord.

Our Church places her memory on April 1st, the day of her repose, and also on the Fifth Sunday of Lent (today). She is held up for us all as a case study and example of the power of repentance, constant watchfulness, and victory over distorted and impassioned thoughts. She also demonstrates the desire of our loving Lord to forgive, restore, and bestow powerful spiritual gifts of grace upon all who deeply and truly repent. May St. Mary inspire us all to deepen our repentance, and may she intercede for us all to our Merciful Lord.

Saint John Climacus is honored by our holy Church as a great ascetic and author of the renowned spiritual book called The Ladder of Divine Ascent. He went to Sinai and became a monk before he was twenty. For nineteen years, John progressed under obedience to his spiritual father until his elder's death. He then became a solitary hermit, where he spent forty years laboring in prayer, fasting and repentance. Reports of his holiness spread far and wide, and visitors from all walks of life came to him for guidance. He was chosen as abbot of Sinai when he was seventy-five and governed the holy monastery for four years.

Knowing of the wisdom and spiritual gifts of Saint John, the abbot of Raithu asked him to compose a guide to the monastic life. Deeming himself unworthy of this task, only out of obedience did he fulfill the request. Inspired by Jacob's ladder in the Old Testament (Gen. 28:12), he called his work The Ladder, for the book is “a fixed ladder leading from earthly things to the Holy of Holies.” The thirty steps of spiritual perfection correspond to the Lord's age. The Fourth Step on obedience is both enlightening and timely, since many today think that obedience is giving up one's will and losing one's freedom. Christian obedience, however, is the proper exercise of our freedom, freely offered to God and to our neighbor. This type of obedience is an act of love. Within this fourth chapter, readers should pay special attention to the story of Saint Acacius, who through obedience was sanctified and even taught his abusive elder from the grave.

This book became a classic spiritual work all over the Orthodox world read by monastics throughout Great Lent. For this reason, the Church dedicated the Fourth Sunday of Lent to the memory of Saint John and his God-inspired book. We, too, should read this enlightened work of this great Father of our Church, but we should humbly keep in mind that it was intended for monastics. Therefore, we should carefully glean from it only the spiritual principles meant for all Christians that express the core teachings of Christ.

The Holy Cross

We have arrived at the mid-point of Great Lent. We are feeling the fatigue of our spiritual efforts. The Church realizes that by this time in the Fast, we need more grace, inspiration, and encouragement. The image the Church puts before us is the ascent up a steep hill. This hill is so steep that the upward trail is full of switchbacks. During the first half of our climb, we cannot see the top. Each of us has our heads down as we find a rhythm and simply put one foot in front of the other. Halfway up the hill, when we are wondering if we can get enough air in our lungs and have the stamina to make it to the top, we round a corner and come to a flat stretch that straightens out. Only from this vantage point do we get a glimpse of the summit. In clear view at the top is the glorious Cross, an emblem of victory, encouragement and strength standing erect and beckoning us upward. We take advantage of this flat terrain to rest for a moment, remembering that the Cross represents real power, since it is a symbol of perfect humility, obedience, self-sacrifice, selflessness and love. These are all virtues that the Evil One and his demons reject and therefore cannot comprehend or approach. For us faithful Christians, embracing these virtues open us up to the abundant and life-giving and divine grace of God—exactly what we need to finish the Lenten ascent set before us. Our Church places the Holy Cross before us to remind us of Christ's victory on the Cross: a victory of love over death. We elevate the Cross and remember to take up our own crosses, expressing our own humility, love and obedience to God. It is through our own love for God and our willingness to obey the Church's divinely-inspired teaching on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as a means toward greater communion with Him that we find the inspiration and the strength for the second half of Great Lent.

A Second Triumph of Orthodoxy

Today we commemorate the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas as a second triumph of Orthodoxy. Like the defense of icons this past Sunday, today's remembrance of the teaching of St. Gregory is another celebration of God becoming man and uniting Himself to our humanity. This union of the divine and human natures in the one Person, Jesus Christ, means that we can become “partakers of God's divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). Through our cooperation with God and our participation in the full life of the Church—prayer, repentance, worship and the sacraments—we can come into personal communion and union with God, temples of the living God and saints.

St. Gregory lived during the 14th century. He was a fervent practitioner of the Jesus Prayer and became known all over Mt. Athos as both a holy monk and a wise theologian. He was asked to defend the Orthodox Faith against theological attacks from a Calabrian philosopher named Barlaam. Barlaam believed that human beings could only know about God through study, but they could not know God directly through true Christian experience. St. Gregory disagreed with this premise. St. Gregory contended that the human person—soul, mind, and body—could be transfigured by divine grace and know God experientially and directly. St. Gregory pointed to the Transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor, teaching that the light of the Transfiguration was the uncreated and fully divine Energies of God. He explained that the Apostles could not have experienced their Lord's divinity without being transfigured and deified themselves. This same experience, argued St. Gregory, had been shared by him personally, as well as by many others within the Orthodox Church through the centuries. St. Gregory further explained the difference between God's Essence, which is unknowable and transcendent, and His Energies, which although uncreated and fully divine, are both knowable and communicated to us. In 1347, Gregory was elected Archbishop of Thessalonica and served the Church as a hierarch until his death in 1359. The life and teachings of St. Gregory Palamas were so widely accepted by the whole Church that he was canonized a Saint only 9 years after his repose.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (Jn. 1:14) The Sunday of Orthodoxy is celebrated annually on the first Sunday of Great Lent, because icons were restored back into the Church on that day in 843. In that year, the iconoclastic controversy, which had raged on and off since 726, was finally laid to rest. This is considered a “Triumph of Orthodoxy,” because icons are an expression of the truth of the incarnation. Before the incarnation, no one had ever seen God. Afterwards, when people beheld Jesus Christ, they were looking at God. They could touch Him, hear Him, and be in His physical presence. St. Paul teaches that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). The word for image in Greek is eikona, or icon. Godcould now be depicted in image form, because He could be seen in the flesh. With the coming of Christ, the created world could be used in holy ways toward humankind’s salvation. Material things like water, wine, bread, oil, wood, metal, and paint could be imbued with God’s grace. Human beingscould become holy relics, because they surrendered so deeply to the Holy Spirit that He sanctified their bodies as temples of the living God.

St. John of Damascus, an 8th century Saint and defender of icons, wrote:

In former times, God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God.

This distinction between worship and veneration has always safeguarded the Orthodox Church from idol worship. Only God is worshipped, but holy items like icons, the Gospel Book, the cross, the altar table, and the right hand of a priest or bishop can be venerated (shown honor). Today, we humblyproclaim the triumph of the truth of the incarnation, the triumph of apostolic truth over falsehood. God has become a human being that all human beings might become like God by grace. To God be the glory forever. Amen!

The Sunday of Forgiveness

Today is the last day before Great Lent begins. The holy fathers have chosen to emphasize forgiveness as the central theme for this day. The Gospel passage comes from the Sermon on the Mount. In this passage, Jesus says, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This statement holds within it three vital truths. First, Jesus does not command with forcefulness His followers to forgiveothers. Instead, He invites us to forgive out of our own free will. We get to choose whether we hold onto hurts, offenses and wrongs or let them go. We get to choose whether weshow mercy toward others and desire their good and their salvation. God gives us the power to fill our minds and hearts with anger, rancor, judgment, ill-will and hatred; allstates that act like caustic and dehumanizing poison within us. In contrast, God allows us to fast from these poisons, keeping our minds and hearts open as receptacles of love andthe grace of God. The second truth is that, while we fast during Lent from various foods, the most important fast is from the remembrance of wrongs, judgment, and the holding of grudges. The unwillingness to forgive cuts us off from other human beings, from God, and even from our true selves. Finally, the third and most important truth is that our own refusal to forgive others closes us off to the forgiveness of God. When we refuse to let go and forgive another, our hearts become closed off to God. He wants to forgive us, but the state of our hardened heart prevents Him. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “Neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” May we utilize this day before Great Lent to intentionally seek the forgiveness of everyone around us, and may we intentionally forgive even those who are far off who may have wronged us, whether they are still alive or havefallen asleep.