Reflections on Pascha
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Christ is risen!
In the Byzantine rite, Pascha is the central theme. It is a commonplace among liturgical scholars that the resurrection is the overwhelming theme of all Byzantine hymnography and liturgy. Everything in the rite revolves around the resurrection. The Pasch shines as a great light which illumines everything in the church: the songs, the prayers, the cycles: daily, weekly, yearly. So, “let us be illumined by the feast.”
Christ is risen!
The Antiochian tradition of beating down the doors of the church on the morning of the Pasch — from whence does it come? Jerusalem is my guess — since the Basilica of the Resurrection, the Anastasis, is actually built over the traditional tomb of the Lord. Archimandrite Ephrem, upon reading about it in the pages of the Orthodox Study Bible, expresses wonder and surprise; being completely unfamiliar with it, he states rather forcefully, “Since the typikon that underlies this book is clearly most bizarre, it might have been helpful to have been told where it comes from.”
Noting Fr. Ephrem’s reservations about the tradition (which he seems to think strange and novel as well as theologically misguided, though I distrust most theological interpretations of simple liturgical rites like processions), I must admit a sentimental attachment to the rite of beating down the doors. We co-opted it from the Antiochians before we were received into communion with the Orthodox Church in America. Something about it resonates with my first memories of Orthodoxy. I miss it.
When it is done, though, the rite should be kept with the reading of the Gospel after the procession around the church.
Christ is risen!
In strict Russian tradition, Archpriest Dennis tells me, nothing is read during Bright Week; everything is sung. This means no recto-tonal recitation of verses; everything has a melody — even “Vouchsafe, O Lord…”! What a wonderful expression of the paschal joy!
One member of St Nicholas mentioned to me that the receding of energy that accompanies the end of Lent and the beginning of Bright Week always seems somewhat depressing rather than joyful. I know the feeling well. I used to feel it especially when we would travel from Lexington to Indianapolis to celebrate the Pasch. I kept staying longer and longer, until the last year I found myself travelling home Tuesday morning. It was especially difficult because the community in Indianapolis mostly lives in the neighborhood around the church, so Bright Week is indeed bright. There is so much going on. There is the annual Bright Monday barbeque, started by the residents of the Bachelor Pad of Glory, and one need not want for company or feasting for the whole week.
Orthodoxy is all about community. Parishes spread out across entire regions cannot possibly hope to recapture the community dynamic of a village. In our increasingly individualistic and alienated society, community like that must become a priority. Unless we are intentional about that kind of community, we will find ourselves continuing in the status quo of our loneliness.
We were made for communion.
Christ is risen!
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2 Responses to “Reflections on Pascha”
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May 3rd, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Personally, I was pretty underwhelmed with the OSB, and like Fr. Ephrem I wonder exactly who the target audience was supposed to be. The extras seem to be aimed at explaining Orthodoxy to inquirers, which is not what I expected from a study Bible. There are lots of books out there better suited for that purpose, and I bet 95% of English-speaking inquirers to Orthodoxy already own a Bible with the NT and Psalms (theirs probably even contains the Old Testament.)
But I think he’s off base about the Antiochian tradition of banging on the door. As he mentions in his review, the text for that is straight out of the Psalms. I would be curious to know what theological faults he finds with it (other than it not being Russian, which is hardly a sin.) Honestly, that practice probably predates their typikon–and even the baptism of Rus–by hundreds of years. Seems like an odd thing to get worked up over.
May 3rd, 2005 at 11:09 pm
Archimandrite Ephrem is, I believe, in Greek Orthodox Great Britain (ie, the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain). His translations make use of Greek texts and typica almost exclusively, so his complaint isn’t about it being non-Russian, per se, but that it isn’t in any typicon, Greek or Russian, that he is familiar with — which is actually saying quite a lot. His theological complaint is that it goes against the purpose of the paschal procession, according to him, which is to imitate the myrrh-bearers’ procession to the tomb.