Great & Holy Pascha 2013
Time in this fallen world is often experienced as something we need to use up or even kill in our never-ending pursuit of pleasure and cessation from work. But the irony is that for however long or hard we work, leisure time, that supposed reward at the end of a day’s labor, ever seeks to elude us. Especially in America, we can never seem to work long enough or hard enough to reach it, if pleasure really is the goal we should be seeking at all.
The Epicurean philosophers and their modern Madison Avenue ad agencies bid us to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. The Lord Jesus Christ bids us, rather paradoxically, to take up our cross and die with him. And no one in the history of the world who has taken the Lord’s advice over the Epicureans has ever been sorry for it, for our crucifixion always ends, as His, in resurrection.
On this morning of Christ’s All-Holy, Glorious, and Life-Creating Resurrection, we again hasten to the tomb bearing, like the ever-faithful myrhhbearers, sweet spices and flowers to grace his tomb ever dawning. We hasten early while it is still dark because like a bride going to meet her bridegroom, we cannot bear one more second of separation from our Lord and Savior.
I got me flowers to strew Thy way; I got me boughs off many a tree, but Thou wast up by break of day, and brought Thy sweets along with Thee. The sun arising in the east, though he give light, the earth perfume, if they should offer to contest with Thy arising, they presume. Can there be any day but this, though many suns to shine endeavor? We count three hundred, but we miss; there is but One, and that One ever. Alleluia.
ONE day. One day, says the poet: the never ending day of his Resurrection.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Alleluia.
A Video of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem.
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