An Orthodox Easter
Editor’s note: Our Eastern Orthodox sisters and brothers celebrate Pascha this Sunday, April 12 — the culmination of Great Lent and Holy Week, marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as observed by Greek, Coptic, and many other Orthodox traditions.
If you’ve never celebrated Holy Week and Pascha (Passover) in an Orthodox Church, it’s an experience you won’t forget. It can be a little overwhelming, jarring even – an assault on the senses. But this shouldn’t be surprising. What you’re feeling are the tremors… the earth begins to shake with each footstep Christ takes toward his enthronement, and these tremors build and build and build. We are in the midst of an earthquake, its power rumbling throughout the cosmos.
Far from being a blank space between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Holy Saturday is an invasion, the harrowing of a fallen kingdom. The gates of Hades cannot stand against the Man that now comes. Each year, in every Orthodox Church, we hear of this downfall in St. John Chrysostom’s paschal homily, where we proclaim, “Hell took a body, and met God face to face.” For Satan, Hell, Death, Sin, and all the demonic powers aligned against God, the gospel of Jesus Christ is decidedly not good news. Their dominion crumbles to its end.
However, for us gathered together in the middle of the night on Holy Saturday through Easter Sunday, this is ineffably good news. For while Christ’s work shatters all the enemies of the Father, this same work binds together what has been broken in humanity. Since the disobedience of our first parents, Death has torn us apart. It rips us from family, friends, neighbors, and loved ones. They depart, and we are left. We feel as though we’ve been separated by a great chasm; a wall now standing between us. We may also have been told, by well-meaning folks, that the dead are dead and we’ll be with them again someday. But not now, obviously. Fair enough. But this is just buttressing that wall between us, reinforcing the gates that keep us from those we love but no longer see.
Thankfully, this is not what Christians experience in the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, the dead are not dead, for he is the God of the living. In his conquering of Death by his death, this thing can no longer keep them from us, nor us from them. Like the curtain in the temple, the wall separating us from each other, built brick by brick by our own sin, is torn, ripped to shreds. It cannot be mended. It is ruined.
This is the earthquake we feel on this Feast of Feasts. This is the shattering of hellish gates we hear. This is the terrible news we proclaim to the enemies of God. This is the hope we cling to, the freedom we receive, and the family we share in.
O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
