25 April 2008
Good Friday/ Pascha
Today our brothers and sisters in Orthodoxy are celebrating Good Friday and tomorrow night they will celebrate Pascha. Last year we got to celebrate together - this year we are a month apart. To all my Orthodox friends: May the Lord who triumphed upon the tree, trampling down death by His death, bring to you the unquenchable joy of His resurrection!
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Thanks. The priest at my church noted something at the end of Matins (Friday Matins is anticipated the evening before) that we were already hearing about the Resurrection in the midst of the very long service of the 12 Passion Gospels. We heard them in the hymns, but even in one the readings. Both the Cross and Resurrection truly are cosmic events of all time, all at once, and we enter into it in some small, feeble way far too overwhelming to even really comprehend.
"We worship your Sufferings, O Christ; show us also your glorious Resurrection."
The text of the Holy Week services can be found here, for those who are interested:
http://www.anastasis.org.uk/holyweek.htm
Pascha is here:
http://www.anastasis.org.uk/pascha.htm
Reminds me also of our Collect for Palm Sunday, whose central petition is:
"Mercifully grant that we may follow the example of His great humility and be made partakers of His resurrection."
And on Good Friday, at the main service, we sing (along with you, I believe):
We adore You, O Lord, and we praise and glorify Your holy resurrection. For behold, by the wood of Your cross joy has come into all the world.
Thank you.
I was particularly moved by the beautiful poetry of last night, such as
“Your life-bearing side, gushing up like a spring in Eden, gives drink to your Church, O Christ, as a spiritual Paradise, from there dividing, as into four heads, into four Gospels, it waters the World, making creation glad and faithfully teaching the nations to worship your Kingdom.”
“Lifted up on the Cross, destroying the power of death and as God wiping out the record against us, O Lord, only Lover of humankind, grant the repentance of the Thief also to us who worship in faith, Christ our God, and who cry to you, ‘Remember us also, Saviour, in your kingdom’.”
Trent Sebits
We do sing the same thing. The section I quoted is the end of the Antiphon beginning with what you quoted, I think.
The first hymn you quote, Trent, struck me as well. References to the blood of Christ are (almost?) always in reference to Communion and not to a sacrificial system requiring blood. It was an interesting difference to note while my legs were aching and my voice was getting scratchier last night.
Wasn't the same Antiphon, I checked. It sounds an awful lot like what we sing after Communion in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, though.
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