Pascha - Pentecost Meditations, 2006

June 14, 2006 - Worshiping the Undivided Trinity...

Dear Parish Faithful,

As we continue in this fast-free week of Pentecost, I would like to add a few more comments by way of meditation and reflection. 

 All Orthodox Christians - and here we are including our children - are more-than-familiar with the Trisgion Prayers.  Whenever we pray, at church or at home, we usually begin the service or our Prayer Rule with this short unit of prayer that we all know by heart.  The Trisagion Prayers are learned from earliest childhood by many.  We imbibe them with our mother's milk, so to speak.  With the celebration of Pentecost, we now say our Trisagion Prayers in their most familiar form, beginning with "O, Heaven King ...," one of the few prayers of the Church, actually, directed so specifically to the Holy Spirit.  The Greek term Trisagion, of course, means "thrice-holy," the term reserved for the part of the prayer that we translate as:  Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.  This, in turn, is based on the vision of the prophet Isaiah, who beheld the glory of God in the temple in Jerusalem (Is. 6:1-13).  The prophet was vouchsafed one of the most awesome visions recorded in the Scriptures, when He

        saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple.
        Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with
        two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.  (Is. 6:1-2)

The prophet not only saw, but heard marvelous things, for he continues about the six-winged seraphim:

        And one called to another and said:
            "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
        the whole world is full of his glory."  (Is. 6:3)

Hence, the "thice holy" of our prayer.  This is reproduced in the Liturgy, as everyone surely recognizes, during the Anaphora, when the bishop or priest first prays: 

        ... and we thank Thee for this Liturgy which Thou hast deigned to accept at our hands,
        though there stand by Thee thousands of archangels and hosts of angels, the 
        Cherubim and the Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, who soar aloft, borne on their
        pinions

And then exclaims:

        Singing the triumphant hymn, shouting, proclaiming and saying:

The choir, chanter(s), or the entire congregation than responds:

        Holy!  Holy!  Holy!  Lord of Sabaoth!  Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory!  Hosanna in the
        highest!  Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!

I relate all of this to our celebration of Pentecost, for to once again refer to the Vespers of Pentecost, near the end of the service, as one of the aposticha, we sang a profoundly theological hymn that begins as follows:

        Come, Let us worship the Tri-personal
           Godhead,
        The Son in the Father with the Holy
           Spirit,
        The Father timelessly begets the coreigning
           and coeternal Son.
        The Holy Spirit was in the Fathers,
           glorified equally with the Son,
        One Power, One Substance, One Godhead!

The remainder of this beautiful hymn can be understood as an extended theological explanation of the basic phrase of the Trisagion, "Holy God!  Holy Mighty!  Holy Immortal!"

        In worshipping Him, let us say:
        Holy God:  who made all things
           through the Son,
        With the cooperation of the Spirit.
        Holy Mighty:  through whom we know
           the Father,
        Through Whom the Holy Spirit came
           into the world!
        Holy Immortal:  the comforting Spirit,
        Proceeding from the Father and resting
           in the Son.
        O Holy Trinity:  glory to Thee!

Therefore, the Trisagion is a prayer glorifying the "holy, consubstantial, and undivided Trinity."  This is a wonderful example of just how integrated is our theology with prayer and doxology.  The principle is that "we pray what we believe."  In other words, our understanding of the Trinity is expressed in prayer; we not only believe in the Trinity, but we worship the Trinity.  Or, to again turn to the Liturgy, after the bishop or priest exclaims:

        Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess

The choir/cogregation responds:

        Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!  The Trinity, one in essence, and undivided!

This is why Pentecost is the Feast on which we celebrate the manifestation of the Holy Trinity to the world in a new and unprecedented manner.  When you stand before your icon, or wherever you may be, and offer up the Trisagion Prayers, you are expressing your belief in the "Tri-personal God" - and no other. 

One last time, in the bold words of the Liturgy:

        We have seen the true Light!  We have received the heavenly Spirit!  We have found the
        true Faith!  Worshipping the undivided Trinity, who has saved us.

Our spiritual intellects are being prepared for contemplation of the Holy Trinity as we pray together openly in the church as a Body, or secretly in the still quiet of our rooms/hearts. 

 Fr. Steven

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June 12, 2006 - On Bended Knee

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

Orthodox Christians throughout the world celebrated the great Feast of Pentecost yesterday, and continue to celebrate it through the course of this week.  The Spirit is life and life-giving, and the Church is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  This is reflected in the decoration of the church with flowers and green branches, for the Church "never grows old, but is always young."   The Church is thus "pentecostal" at the very heart of its existence.  In further honor of the Feast, and as another sure sign of the close relationship between Pascha and Pentecost, this week is designated as "fast-free" as is Bright Week following Pascha.  In many parishes, the Vespers of Pentecost was served immediately following the Liturgy (to assure some participation?).  This service is filled with remarkable hymnography calling to mind the Holy Trinity, the Person of the Holy Spirit, and the Day of Pentecost.  These hymns uplift our spirits more through their theological depth, than through any merely emotional impact.  The Holy Spirit is glorified as a divine Person and for His manifold gifts:

 

The Holy Spirit is Light and Life,
The living Fountain of spiritual gifts:
The Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of
understanding.
He is good, upright, intelligent and
ruling.
He purifies us from our sins.
The Spirit is the deifying God:
Fire proceeding from Fire,
Speaking, acting, distributing gifts.
By the Spirit the prophets, Divine
apostles and martyrs were crowned.
Strange is this report!  Strange
is this sight.
Fire is divided for the granting of gifts.

 

  As the Day of Pentecost is also popularly known as "Trinity Sunday," we chant and sing to the glory of the Holy Spirit and His "relationship" with the Father and the Son:

 

The Holy Spirit was, is, and ever shall be
Without beginning, without an end,
Forever united and numbered with the
Father and the Son.
He is Life, and life-creating,
The Light, and the Giver of Light,
Good in Himself, the Fountain of
goodness,
Through whom the Father is known
and the Son glorified.
All acknowledge one Power, one Order,
One worship of the Holy Trinity.

 

     These hymns clearly indicate  that the Holy Spirit is the source of deifying grace - not warm and fuzzy feelings! 

     Of course, what strikes us as most characteristic, or "special," about the Vespers of Pentecost, are the Kneeling Prayers that are found at the heart of the service.  As this is the first time that we kneel in church for fifty days, an even greater solemnity is imparted to these remarkable (and lengthy!) prayers.  Fr. Alexander Schmemann offers the following explanation as to why we kneel for these prayers:

 

        Then ... we are invited to kneel.  This is our first kneeling since Pascha.  It signifies that
        after these fifty days of paschal joy and fulness, of experiencing the Kingdom of God, the
        Church now is about to begin her pilgrimage through time and history.  It is evening again,
        and the night approaches, during which temptations and failures await us, when, more
        than anything else, we need Divine help, that presence and power of the Holy Spirit, who
        has already revealed to us the joyful End, who now will help us in our effort towards
        fulfilment and salvation.

 

     The First Prayer concentrates on our need for forgiveness, as we beg God on bended knees to manifest His saving compassion to us:

 

        ... Hearken, therefore, to us now who pray to Thee, and remember us, humble and condemned
        as we are, and turn again the captivity of our souls, Thou that hast Thine own compassion as
        intercessor for us.  Receive us who fall down before Thee and cry, We have sinned ... Thou
        art our God, but since our days have passed in vanity, we have been stripped of Thine help,
        we have been deprived of every defense.  But emboldened by Thy compassions, we call out,
        Remember not the sins of our youth and our ignorance and cleanse Thou us of our secret sins,
        cast us not away in time of old age; when our strength fails, forsake us not.  Before we return
        to the earth, make us worthy to turn again unto Thee, and attend to us in favor and grace ...

 

     In the Second Prayer, we ask God to send the Holy Spirit to us as our divine Guide through life:

 

        ... Grant to my reasoning the Spirit of Thy wisdom, and give the Spirit of understanding to my
        foolishness.  Overshadow my deeds with the Spirit of Thy fear, and renew a right Spirit in
        inmost parts.  And with Thy guiding Spirit, establish my faltering mind, that being guided
        every day by Thy good Spirit toward what is useful, I may be vouchsafed to keep Thy
        commandments and always to remember Thy glorious coming-again, which shall search
        out our deeds ...

 

    In the Third Prayer, we remember very movingly all of those "who have departed in the hope of resurrection to eternal life in Thy communiom:"

 

        ... Accept, therefore, O Master, our prayers and supplications, and give rest to all the fathers
        and mothers, brothers and sisters of each of us, and to any others of our kindred and of our
        people, and to every soul that has gone to rest before in the hope of resurrectiion unto life
        eternal.  Set their spirits and their names in the book of life, in the bosom of Abraham, Isaac
        and Jacob, in the land of the living, in the kingdom of heaven, in a Paradise of bliss, leading
        all, by Thy radiant Angels, into Thy holy abode, raising us also with Thee our bodies in the day
        which has been appointed according to Thy holy and unfailing promise...

 

     After each Prayer, we were directed to stand again through the following petition which profoundly summarizes a distinctly Christian form of human existence:

        Help us, save us, have mercy on us, raise us up, and keep us, O God, by Thy grace.

    Our present lives and our hopes are offered to God in the conviction that He will hear our common prayer and send the "Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth" to "abide in us and cleanse us from every impurity and save our souls."  It is a wonderful and blessed experience to be able to do this together as a community on the great Day of Pentecost.  There are so many false idols surrounding us (including the "American" variety) and pressing us to bow down before them, that it is imperative that we humbly bow down before the living God - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Our only hope and source of blessings is the Holy Trinity.  If we look elsewhere we are simply being led astray.  Bending the knee on the Day of Pentecost allows us to supplicate our merciful God to forgive us for doing precisely that ("since our days have passed in vanity"), and returning to our senses and the path to the Kingdom of God illuminated by the Holy Spirit.

 Fr. Steven

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June 9, 2006 - Becoming Living Vessels

Dear Parish Faithful,

This weekend we will celebrate the great Feast of Pentecost.  We begin with Great Vespers on Saturday evening, serve the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning, and then complete our celebration with the Vespers of Pentecost and the special Kneeling Prayers - the first time in fifty days that we kneel in the church - immediately after the Liturgy.  Pentecost is as essential an event in the divine economy of our salvation as is Pascha.   Penteost fulfills Pascha, in that the risen and glorified Christ sends the Holy Spirit into the world in fulfilment of the promise He made to His disciples.  The Church could not live or "breathe" without the life-giving presence of the Holy Spirit. A bit more precisely, we could further relate Pentecost to the Feast of Ascension, as the Orthodox biblical scholar Veselin Kesich does in the following manner:

        With Christ's ascension, "our nature ascended" to heaven, and on Pentecost the Holy Spirit
        "descended on to our nature."  The ascension points to Pentecost, to the fulfilment of the
        promise of the Spirit. 

Or, again, in the words of Fr. John Breck:

        This feast, nevertheless, like that of Ascension, reveals and fuffills the work of the Son of God
        for the salvation of the world.  Rather than mark a simple transition from Easter joy to summer
        doldrums, it opens the way for us to share, directly and personally, in Christ's victory over the
        powers of sin and death.

Yet, it is hard to dispel the feeling that Pentecost is not approached or celebrated like the great Feast that it actually is.  Pentecost seems to be treated as a "normal" Sunday.  It is difficult to detect any real enthusiam or anticipation of its coming.  The church may or may not be a filled as usual - it all depends on everyone's personal circumstances or "plans" for the weekend.  In fact, if Pentecost did not fall on a Sunday, it would suffer the same fate as the "lost" and neglected Feast of Ascension.  Truly, it does seem to mark the "transition ... to summer doldrums!"  How remote this all is from the Apostle Paul, who went out of his way to ensure his presence in Jerusalem for the Feast:

        For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he might not have to spend time
        in Asia; for he was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.
        (ACTS 20:16)

And all we have to do is get into or air-conditioned cars and drive a few miles to the church!  Until we are able to overcome the tendency or temptation to pour all of our concentrated attention and energy on Pascha (and even here we basically limit Pascha to a one-day celebration), we will not understand the Church's greatest and most important liturgical cycle, centered around Pascha and culminating with Pentecost; or even understand some of our most basic teaching about the all-Holy Spirit.  The saints teach us that to be filled with the Spirit, one must hunger and thirst for the Spirit's presence.   

We will, of course, read the account of the first Pentecost at the eucharistic Liturgy on Sunday morning, taken from chapter 2 of the Acts of the Apostles.  The book known as the Synaxarion offers this summary of the events of the Feast:

        Thus, on this day, the seventh Sunday of Pascha, the tenth day after the Ascension and the
        fiftieth day after Pascha, at the third hour of the day from the rising of the sun, there suddenly
        came a sound from Heaven, as when a mighty wind blows, and it filled the whole house where
        the Apostles and the rest with them were gathered.  Immediately after the sound, there appeared
        tongues of fire that divided and rested upon the head of each one.  Filled with the Spirit, all those
        present began speaking not in their native tongue, but in other tongues and dialects, as the Holy
        Spirit instructed them.

The imagery here is of a dynamic and life-creating energy.  And yet that "energy" has as its source the Person of the Holy Spirit, "Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified."   Thus, as the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is "Lord and Giver of Life."  (Nicene Creed)   As Fr. John Breck states it:

        Therefore we proclaim, as Orthodox Christians, that the Spirit, as fully as the Father and the
        Son, is indeed a divine Person.  Such is the faith, the bedrock conviction, of the Church.

We can again turn to Fr. John Breck for an insightful summary of the manifold gifts and "workings" of the Holy Spirit as the presence of God in our midst.  In presenting the Apostle Paul's teaching on the Holy Spirit, we read the following:

        The Spirit ... prays within us and on our behalf (Rom. 8:26); He works out our sanctification
        (Rom. 15:16; I Cor. 6:11; II Thess. 2:13; cf. Gal. 5:16-18); He pours out God's love into the
        hearts of believers, enabling them to address the Father by the familiar and intimate name,
        "Abba" (Rom. 5:5; 8:15-16; Gal. 4:6); He confirms our status as "children of God" through
        His indwelling presence and power (Rom. 8:16; Gal. 4:6); He guides and preserves the
        faithful in their ascetic struggle against the passions (Gal. 5:16); and He serves as the
        source and guarantor of our "freedom" from the constraints of the Law, a freedom which
        enables us to behold the glory of the Lord (II Cor. 3:17-18). 

The New Testament Church, from its initial mission to the world inaugurated on Pentecost, is thus "charismatic."   We will pray fervently on Sunday, on "bended knees," that these very gifts of the Holy Spirit may become our own, and that by God's grace and boundless love, we may become living vessels of the Spirit, here and now, as the apostles and saints have been throughout the ages.  Yet, for this to happen, we need to be fervent rather than casual; filled with desire rather than indifference; praying rather than passing time in church.  We can begin that essential transformation right now, during this year's celebration of the great Feast of Pentecost - not the transition to the usual "summer doldrums" but the "last and great day of the Feast" that inaugurates the liturgical cycle of the Spirit-filled  "Sundays after Pentecost."

Fr. Steven

_____

 

AS A KIND OF APPENDIX to the Meditation above, I would like to include a passage from Veselin Kessich's book, The First Day of the New Creation.  In his discussion about Pentecost, Prof. Kesich offers a good summary of the Orthodox position concerning the issue of the filioque.  As Orthodox Christians, we continue to recite the Nicene Creed in its orginal form, without the interpolation of the filioque, the Latin term that means "and from the Son," when proclaiming the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father.  Prof. Kesich summarizes the Orthodox position based upon a careful reading of the Scriptures.  The "filioque controversy" remains to this day a divisive point of contention between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches respectively - and those Western churches that also use the term.  In the words of Prof. Kesich:

 

        It is equally true that the Father sends the Spirit (Jn. 14:16,26).  The Son sends the Spirit,
        but the source of the Spirit is the Father, for the Spirit proceeds from the Father (Jn. 15:26).
        The verb "proceed" that is used in Jn. 15:26 is ekporeuomai.  When it is said that the Son
        "comes forth" from the Father the verb is exerchomai.  St. John consistently uses the latter
        verb whenever he speaks of the Son coming forth from the Father (8:42; 13:3; 16:27f.; 16:30;
        17:8).  The Spirit and the Son have the same and only origin.  They are two distinct persons.
        Their missions are not identical.  Although the Spirit had not been given because Jesus was
        not yet glorified (Jn. 7:39), yet it is nowhere stated in St. John's Gospel that the Spirit "proceeds"
        from the Son as he proceeds from the Father.  Therefore, there is no filioque here. 

 

 Fr. Steven

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June 2, 2006 - On The Ascension: Seek the Things Above

Dear Parish Faithful,

We continue to celebrate the Feast of Ascension following yesterday's Liturgy.  Forty days after His Resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ "ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father."  (Nicene Creed, based on ACTS 1:6-11)  This does not mean that Christ "travelled" to a particular coordinate that could theoretically be located somewhere in a faraway galaxy!  Rather, this spatial imagery reveals to us that Christ - Who is both God and man - was glorified following His earthly ministry, passion, and resurrection, so that the humanity He assumed in the incarnation has been "lifted up" into the Kingdom of Heaven. Paradoxical as it may sound, the co-eternal Son of God returns to where He always was, co-enthroned with the Father and the Holy Spiirt.  Yet, He now "returns"  as the risen and glorified Jesus Christ.  In and through the ascension of Christ, our human nature now dwells in the bosom of the Holy Trinity!  

 In a remarkable passage, the Apostle Paul reveals the consequences of the Lord's Ascension:

        If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is,
        seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that
        are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.  When Christ who is
        our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.   (COL. 3:1-4)

The Apostle Paul exhorts us to set our minds "on things that are above" - truly a challenge when life's everyday concerns are so pressing and demanding of constant responses and decisions.  Yet, perhaps we exaggerate or lose our perspective about those very same "earthly" concerns precisely because we do not place them in the greater perspective of our human destiny in Christ.  With only "this world" on our mental horizon, we can feel overwhelmed by the stifling atmosphere of a closed and cold universe.  If there is no room for our soul or spirit to expand, then every setback or obstacle in life can grow into a crisis of depressing proportions.  We can feel trapped by circumstances or by life itself.  As the atheist-existenialist, Jean Paul Sartre said, there is "no exit."

 If, however, we "seek the things that are above" then our soul or spirit can expand limitlessly - for there are no limits in God - so that our earthly existence with its imperfections and even tragedies can be absorbed into the infinite reality of God where there is reconciliation and transformation through Christ and the Holy Spirit.  It is the fiery wind of the Holy Spirit Who is sent from above by our glorified Lord Jesus Christ that brings boundless relief and "breathing space" to seemingly stifling atmosphere referred to above.

Fr. Lev Gillette wrote the following passage in his commentary on the Feast of the Ascension that challenges and inspires us with the reality of heaven:

        The Ascension makes thoughts of heaven more immediate, more actual to us.  Do we think of
        our pemanent home often enough?  For most Christians, life in heaven is no more than a
        supplement - of which they have but a very hazy notion - to life on earth.  Life in heaven is seen
        somewhat as a postscipt, an appendix, to a book whose text is formed by earthly life.  But it is
        the opposite which is true.  Our earthly life is but the preface to the book.  Life in heaven will be
        its main text, and this text is endless.  To make use of another image, our earthly life is but a
        tunnel, narrow, dark - and very short - which opens onto a magnificent, sunlit landscape.  We
        think too much of what our life now is.  We do not think enough of what it will be.
        (The Year of Grace of the Lord, p. 200)

Fr. Steven

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May 3, 2006 - Lent After Lent?

Dear Parish Faithful,

 

      Christ is Risen!         Indeed He is Risen!

 

    Last week, I posed the question: Is there life after Pascha?  Another question has formed in my mind:  Is there Lent after Lent?  Before proceeding any further, I need to offer two brief comments:  1) I apologize if I have just happened to unsettle anyone with a truly frightening prospect; and 2) I am not a "lent freak!"   My purpose in the question, "Is there Lent after Lent," is meant to pose a challenge.  Is there anything spiritually fruitful that we began to do - or anything spiritually unfruitful that we ceased to do - during Great Lent that we carry over with us into the paschal season and beyond?  Are we able to establish some genuine consistency in our ecclesial lives, surely one of the most important elements in nurturing a holistic approach to our Faith.  If I am not mistaken, a real temptation that exists once Great Lent is over, is to go back to "life as usual," as if Great Lent is at most a pious interlude during which we act more "religiously;" and at worst, a period of specific rules that are meant to be more-or-less mechanically observed out of a sense of "obligation."    This undermines the whole reality of repentance at its core, and drives us back into the dubious practice of the religious compartmentalization of our lives.  Great Lent is over - now what? 

     I am not even sure just how healthy it is to assess and analyze our "lenten efforts."  Great Lent is a "school of repentance," but this does not mean that we are to grade ourselves upon its completion.   However, we can ask ourselves:  Was I more responsible, regular, and consistent in prayer, charity and fasting?  Did I make a point of reading the Scriptures with the same care and consistency?  Did I participate in the liturgical services with greater regularity?  Did I more carefully watch my language and gestures, or my words and actions on an over-all basis?  Did I make a breakthrough on overcoming any specific "passions" or other manifestations of sinful living?  Did I work on restoring any broken relationships?   Did I simply give more of myself to Christ?  Did I come to love Christ even more as I prostrated myself in faith before His life-giving Cross and tomb?   Then why not continue?   Not to continue is to somehow fail to actualize in our own lives the renewal and restoration of human nature that definitively ocurred through the Cross and Resurrection.  Appropriating the fruits of Christ's redemptive Death and life-giving Resurrection is essential for our self-designation as Christians. 

   In other words, can we carry the "spirit" of lent (and some of its practices) with us outside of Lent?  In this way, we are no longer "keeping Lent" but simply practicing our Faith with the vigilance it requires.  We still must fast (on the appropriate days), pray and give alms.  We still need to nourish ourselves with the Holy Scriptures.  We must continue to wage "warfare against the passions" that are always threatening to engulf us.  We need to deepen our love for Christ so that it surpasses any other commitment based on love in our lives.  Or, have we doomed ourselves to being intense in the practice of our Faith for a short, predetermined length of time, and then pay "lip service" or token observance to it until next year?!    In a rather unfortunate twist, Great Lent can work against us when we reduce it to such a limited purpose.  Great Lent is the designated time of  year meant to get us "back on track" and living more consciously Christian lives because circumstances and our own weaknesses often work against us.  It is the "example" rather than the "exception" if properly understood.  In other areas of life, do we simply abandon good practices - in matters of health, let us say - because a designated period of testing or observing these good practices has come to an end?

    I have already rehearsed all of the reasons for our annual post-paschal swoon in an earlier meditation.  Actually, today may be a good day to pull out of it and reawaken to the glorious gift of life offered to us in the Church.  This Wednesday is the first designated fast day since Pascha.  We have enjoyed the treat of a "fast-free" period during Bright Week, and which has continued until today.  But now, we have returned to our usual pattern of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays.  I would suggest that today may be one of the most difficult days of fasting in the entire year.  It is very hard to re-establish a discipline that was temporarily "suspended" with the paschal celebration.  Yes, in many ways we are returning to "life as usual," even in the Church, but that is a "way of life" that is directed by the wisdom of the Church toward our salvation and as a witness to the world.  Let us take the best of Lent, and continue with it throughout the days of our life.  "Lent after Lent" means that there is "Life after Pascha."

 

      Christ is Risen!         Indeed He is Risen!

 Fr. Steven

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Bright Thursday - April 27 - Post Pascha Blues? or A Life Renewing Joy!

Dear Parish Faithful,

CHRIST IS RISEN!

My email server suffered through another meltdown of sorts, and I lost a Meditation (from yesterday) that was just about completed.  (My hand remains a bit sore after landing heavily on my desk a couple ot times!)  Unable to reproduce it, I am offering it in a kind of outline form:

_____

Question:  Is there life after Pascha?  Meaning ecclesial/church life following the paschal celebration.  Is it possible to retain any of the vibrancy and joy of commemorating, participating, and experiencing the Resurrection of Christ?  Can we continue to maintain our ecclesial lives as a central priority? 

Humanly speaking, that may be an unrealistic expectation, for the following reasons:

     However, that does not mean that our parish(es) have to empty out and become tomb-like immediately.  We need not begin the inevitable "summer slowdown" on Bright Monday!  The Resurrection of Christ is meant to be enlivening, not deadening.

     The "swoon theory" is a hopelessly absurd idea meant to explain away the Resurrection of Christ; but many of the faithful experience a "post-paschal swoon" from which they awaken at some distant time according to their own convenience.  The Paschal Season makes no impact.

     Perhaps we need to probe just what each and every one of us means by the very term "Pascha."

     It is the Greek form of the Hebrew word for Passover.  Pascha, therefore, is:

     The exuberance of our paschal celebration during the "night brighter than the day" is the festal expression of the Church's deepest truth.  The light, color, music and movement are all manifestations of the paschal joy that sweep through the church as we proclaim that Christ is Risen!  Hopefully, it is also the expression of our own faith in the Risen Lord.

     However, for some "Pascha" may be reduced to something other than what it truly is.  Or it takes on a life of its own, detached and independent from what was outlined above.  This is probably true for once-a-year visitors to the church - Easter Orthodox Christians - but this can also tempt us.  Such reductions may include:

    Perhaps we could say that the above is more a description of "Easter" popularly understood, rather than Pascha.  Again, when these approaches are detached from the deeper meaning of Pascha then the inevitable and "natural" occurs:  Pascha is reduced to a once-a-year special event that is over and done with the moment one's exhausted head hits the pillow some time early in the morning.  It is forgotten before all of the Easter eggs - real and chocolate - are consumed; and the search then begins for the next potentially exciting event. 

    The Risen Christ appeared to His disciples for forty days following His Resurrection.  He did not depart from them into Heaven immediately.  I believe that we can assume that the disciples remained "excited" for that entire period - and beyond.  We have a forty day paschal season in the Church for this reason.  As the disciples rejoiced in the Lord's presence, the same possibility is before us as we too rejoice in the Lord's presence, since He promised to be with us "until the end of the world."  Everyone, beginning with the clergy, probably suffers from the "post-paschal blues" to some extent.  We must rely on our faith and trust that our Lord Jesus Christ has been bodily raised from the dead, the "first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep"  (I COR. 15:20), in order to revive us to the joy of this unique season in which the Church resounds with the paschal exclamation that "Christ is Risen!"

Fr. Steven

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Bright Monday, April 24 - Experiencing The Living Christ

Dear Parish Faithful, 

CHRIST IS RISEN!

I discovered this passage from somewhere among Fr. Alexander Schmemann's numerous writings.  It seems like an appropriate passage for this Bright Monday.  Pay careful attention to his first two sentences and how he places the paschal celebration within the context of an already existing faith.  This is a thought that I will try and expand upon perhaps later during Bright Week.

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My belief in Christ does not come from the opportunity given to me to participate since earliest childhood in the paschal celebration.  Rather, Pascha is made possible, that unique night fills with light and joy and such victorious power in the greeting "Christ is Risen!  Truly He is Risen!"  because my faith itself was born from experience of the living Christ.  How and when was it born?  I don't know, I don't remember.  I only know that every time I open the Gospel and read about Christ, read his words, read his teaching, i consciously repeat, with all my heart and being, what was said by those who were sent to arrest Christ but who returned to the Pharisees without him:  "No man ever spoke like this man" (JN. 7:46).  Therefore what I know first of all is that Christ's teaching is alive, and that nothing on earth can be compared with it.  And this teaching is about him, about eternal life, about victory over death, about a love that conquers and overcomes death.  I know as well that in a life where everything seems so difficult and tiresome, the one constant that never changes and never leaves is this inner awareness that Christ is  with me.  "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you" (JN. 14:18).  And he does come and give the feeling of his presence through prayer, through a thrill of soul, through a joy so incomprehensible, yet so very alive, through his mysterious, but again so certain, presence in church during services and in sacraments.  This living experience is always growing, this knowledge,  this awareness which becomes so obvious that Christ is here and that his word has been fulfilled:  whoever loves Me, "I will love him and manifest myself to him." (JN. 14:21).  And whether I am in a crowd or alone, this certitude of his presence, this power of his word, this joy of faith in him  remains with me.  This is the only answer and the only proof. 

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Fr. Steven

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