Preparation for Pascha

By Matushka Donna Farley

The recent discovery in Georgia of a crematorium fraud has brought the reality of death and decay to TV screens in a way that most people have succeeded in eliminating from their consciousness entirely. The funeral industry has sanitized death and hidden its dreadful ravages upon the human body. Increasingly at non-Orthodox "funerals",  cremation has become trendy. There is no body present at the service to receive the final kiss, as it is in the Orthodox practice.

By Fr. Thomas Hopko,
from "The Orthodox Faith, Volume II, Worship"

The first service belonging to Holy Saturday -- called in the Church the Blessed Sabbath -- is the Vespers of Good Friday. It is usually celebrated in the mid-afternoon to commemorate the burial of Jesus.

Before the service begins, a "tomb" is erected in the middle of the church building and is decorated with flowers. Also a special icon which is painted on cloth (in Greek, epitaphios; in Slavonic, plaschanitsa) depicting the dead Saviour is placed on the altar table. In English this icon is often called the winding-sheet.

By Daniel Manzuk

It is a tragic fact that today Holy Saturday is viewed by many as an unimportant “day off” between the sorrow of Good Friday and the joy of Pascha. This is absolutely false. That view negates the essential link between the despondency of Good Friday and the ecstasy of Pascha. Holy Saturday is that indispensable link between Christ’s death and Resurrection. It is on Holy Saturday that we commemorate Christ’s conquest of death, which is sealed through the Resurrection. It is a day centered on a mystery beyond our comprehension. Christ is dead, His body lies in a tomb. Yet, at this moment of Death’s apparent victory over Life, Death is being put to death. Christ’s soul, as with every soul to that time, descends to Hades. Yet His soul is unlike any other. He is both God and Man. Hades has no power over Him. It tries to hold Him, as it has held every other soul since Adam and Eve, and fails. The Life that is in Christ the Life-giver, bursts upon the darkness of Hades like a searchlight in a small dark closet.

By Fr. Alexander Schmemann

Great and Holy Saturday is the day on which Christ reposed in the tomb. The Church calls this day the. Blessed Sabbath. The great Moses mystically foreshadowed this day when he said: God blessed the seventh day. This is the blessed Sabbath. This is the day of rest, on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all His works. . . . (Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday)

By Fr. Paul Lazor

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his. we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his."
(Romans 6:3-5; the Epistle section read at the Sacrament of Holy Baptism)

By Fr. John Hainsworth

Every year during Holy Week I read to my congregation an eyewitness account of a certain Pascha night on Solovki Island in 1925. For centuries, this island in the White Sea had been the home of a venerable and remote monastery. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the monks were replaced by political and religious prisoners. The once-beautiful monastery became a concentration camp. The climate of that region was especially harsh and the island well out of sight, and the newly formed gulag became a place of unspeakable horror for its inhabitants.

By Matthew Gallatin

As a young child, Nick Damascus loved watching priests deliver their homilies from the pulpit.  His little heart would stir, and he would say to himself, I want to do that!  I want to stand up there and say, "Hey, you people! Wake up!  God loves you!"  Fifty years later, Nick is indeed a zealous messenger of God.  Oh, he's never preached a homily.   But he does share his Orthodox faith in an uncommonly vibrant way with anyone who will give him half a chance.