Christ is Risen!

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[anaconda]

Beautiful paintings posted above.

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If any man be devout and loveth God,
Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!
If any man be a wise servant,
Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him how receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.

[Aratus]

easter

[TER]

easter

A blessed Pascha to you too!

[heavenlyboy34]

As a bit of interesting trivia, the traditional Easter greeting in Russia is "Христос воскрес " (usually translated as "Christ is risen"). The response to this greeting is "Во истину воскрес" ("Indeed he has").

[heavenlyboy34]

A blessed Pascha to you too!

Interesting! This is Greek, yes? The Russian is similar-Пасха (pahskha)

[TER]

Both the Greek and the Russian word are transliterations of the Hebrew word for Passover. This is also true for Arabic and Latin.

[jazzloversinc]

Beautiful! Happy Resurrection Day!

[AFPVet]

Happy Resurrection Day!

[Theocrat]

He is risen indeed!

[TER]

A Paschal Exhortation of St. Gregory the Theologian




Yesterday the Lamb was slain and the door-posts were anointed, and Egypt bewailed her Firstborn, and the Destroyer passed us over, and the Seal was dreadful and reverend, and we were walled in with the Precious Blood. Today we have clean escaped from Egypt and from Pharaoh; and there is none to hinder us from keeping a Feast to the Lord our God— the Feast of our Departure; or from celebrating that Feast, not in the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, carrying with us nothing of ungodly and Egyptian leaven.

Yesterday I was crucified with Him; today I am glorified with Him; yesterday I died with Him; today I am quickened with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him; today I rise with Him. But let us offer to Him Who suffered and rose again for us — you will think perhaps that I am going to say gold, or silver, or woven work or transparent and costly stones, the mere passing material of earth, that remains here below, and is for the most part always possessed by bad men, slaves of the world and of the Prince of the world. Let us offer ourselves, the possession most precious to God, and most fitting; let us give back to the Image what is made after the Image. Let us recognize our Dignity; let us honour our Archetype; let us know the power of the Mystery, and for what Christ died.

Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become God's for His sake, since He for ours became Man. He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich; He took upon Him the form of a servant that we might receive back our liberty; He came down that we might be exalted; He was tempted that we might conquer; He was dishonoured that He might glorify us; He died that He might save us; He ascended that He might draw to Himself us, who were lying low in the Fall of sin. Let us give all, offer all, to Him Who gave Himself a Ransom and a Reconciliation for us. But one can give nothing like oneself, understanding the Mystery, and becoming for His sake all that He became for ours.

[Bman]

C'mon get with it. This thread needs some music! My belated easter gift to RPF Christian population.

[heavenlyboy34]

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Orthodox Christian Pascal service in Ghana:

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Sentenced to Immortality

by Saint Justin of Chelije

Man sentenced God to death; by His Resurrection, He sentenced man to immortality. In return for a beating, He gives an embrace; for abuse, a blessing; for death, immortality. Man never showed so much hate for God as when he crucified Him; and God never showed more love for man than when He arose. Man even wanted to reduce God to a mortal, but God by His Resurrection made man immortal. The crucified God is Risen and has killed death. Death is no more. Immortality has surrounded man and all the words.

By the Resurrection of the God-Man, human nature has been led irreversibly onto the path of immortality, and has become dreadful to death itself. For before the Resurrection of Christ, death was dreadful to man, but after the Resurrection of Christ man has become more dreadful to death. When man lives by faith in the Risen God-Man, he lives above death, out of its reach; it is a footstool for his feet: “O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?” (I Corinthians 15:55) When a man belonging to Christ dies, he simply sets aside his body like clothing, in which he will again be vested on the day of Dread Judgement.

Before the Resurrection of the God-Man, death was the second nature of man: life first, death second. But by His Resurrection, the Lord has changed everything: immortality has become the second nature of man, it has become natural for man; and death – unnatural. As before the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for men to be mortal, so after the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for men to be immortal.

By sin, man became mortal and transient; by the Resurrection of the God-Man, he became immortal and perpetual. In this is the power, the might, the all-mightiness of the Resurrection of Christ. Without it, there would have been no Christianity. Of all miracles, this is the greatest miracle. All other miracles have it as their source and lead to it. From it grow faith, love, hope, prayer, and love for God. Behold: the fugitive disciples, having run away from Jesus when He died, return to Him because He is risen. Behold: the Centurion confessed Christ as the Son of God when he saw the Resurrection from the grave. Behold: all the first Christians became Christian because the Lord Jesus is risen, because death was vanquished. This is what no other faith has; this is what lifts the Lord Christ above all other gods and men; this is what, in the most undoubted manner, shows and demonstrates that Jesus Christ is the One True God and Lord in all the worlds.

Because of the Resurrection of Christ, because of His victory over death, men have become, continue to become, and will continue becoming Christians. The entire history of Christianity is nothing other than the history of a unique miracle, namely, the Resurrection of Christ, which is unbrokenly threaded through the hearts of Christians form one day to the next, from year to year, across the centuries, until the Dead Judgment.

Man is born, in fact, not when his mother bring him into the world, but when he comes to believe in the Risen Christ, for then he is born to life eternal, whereas a mother bears children for death, for the grave. The Resurrection of Christ is the mother of us all, all Christians, the mother of immortals. By faith in the Resurrection, man is born anew, born for eternity. “That is impossible!” says the skeptic. But you listen to what the Risen God-Man says: “All things are possible to him that believeth!” (St. Mark 9:23) The believer is he who lives, with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his being, according to the Gospel of the Risen Lord Jesus.

Faith is our victory, by which we conquer death, faith in the Risen Lord Jesus. Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. The Lord “has removed the string of death.” Death is a serpent; sin is its fangs. By sin, death puts its poison into the soul and into the body of man. The more sins a man has, the more bites, through which death puts its poison in him.

When a wasp stings a man, he uses all his strength to remove the sting. But when sin wounds him, this sting of death, what should be done? One must call upon the Risen Lord Jesus in faith and prayer, that He may remove the sting of death from the soul. He, in His great loving-kindness, will do this, for He is overflowing with mercy and love. When many wasps attack a man’s body and wound it with many stings, that man is poisoned and dies. The same happens with a man’s soul, when many sins wound it with their stings: it is poisoned and dies a death with no resurrection.

Conquering sin in himself through Christ, man overcomes death. If you have lived the day without vanquishing a single sin of yours, know that you have become deadened. Vanquish one, two, or three of your sins, and behold: you have become younger than the youth which does not age, young in immortality and eternity. Never forget that to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with death.

If a man fights with sins and passions, this demonstrates that he indeed believes in the Risen Lord; if the fights with them, he fights for life eternal. If he does not fight, his faith is in vain. If man’s faith is not a fight for immortality and eternity, than tell me, what is it? If faith in Christ does not bring us to resurrection and life eternal, than what use is it to us? If Christ is not risen, that meant that neither sin nor death has been vanquished, than why believe in Christ? For the one who by faith in the Risen Lord fights with each of his sins there will be affirmed in him gradually the feeling that Christ is indeed risen, has indeed vanquished the sting of sin, has indeed vanquished death on all the fronts of combat. Sin gradually diminishes the soul in man, driving it into death, transforming it from immortality to mortality, from incorruption to corruption. The more the sins, the more the mortal man. If man does not feel immortality in himself, know that he is in sins, in bad thoughts, in languid feelings. Christianity is an appeal: Fight with death until the last breath, fight until a final victory has been reached. Every sin is a desertion; every passion is a retreat; every vice is a defeat.

One need not be surprised that Christians also die bodily. This is because the death of the body is a sowing. The mortal body is sown, says the Apostle Paul, and it grows, and is raised in an immortal body. (I Corinthians 15:42-44) The body dissolves, like a sown seed, that the Holy Spirit may quicken and perfect it. If the Lord Christ had not been risen in body, what use would it have for Him? He would not have saved the entire man. If His body did not rise, then why was He incarnate why did He take on Himself flesh, if He gave it nothing of His Divinity?

If Christ is not risen, then why believe in Him? To be honest, I would never have believed in Him had He not risen and had not therefore by vanquished death. Our greatest enemy was killed and we were given immortality. Without this, our world is a noisy display of revolting stupidity and despair, for neither in Heaven nor under Heaven is there a greater stupidity than this world without the Resurrection; and there is not a greater despair than this life without immortality. There is no being in a single world more miserable than man who does not believe in the resurrection of the dead. It would have been better for such a man never to have been born.

In our human world, death is the greatest torment and inhumane horror. Freedom from this torment and horror is salvation. Such a salvation was given the race of man by the Vanquisher of death – the Risen God-Man. He related to us all the mystery of salvation by His Resurrection. To be saved means to assure our body and soul of immortality and life eternal. How do we attain this? By no other way than by a Theanthropic life, a new life, a life in the Risen Lord, in and by the Lord’s Resurrection.

For us Christians, our life on earth is a school in which we learn how to assure ourselves of resurrection and life eternal. For what use is this life if we cannot acquire by it life eternal? But, in order to be resurrected with the Lord Christ, man must first suffer with Him, and live His life as his own. If he does this, then on Pascha he can say with Saint Gregory the Theologian: “Yesterday I was crucified with Him, today I live with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him, today I rise with Him.” (Troparion 2, Ode 3, Matins, Pascha)

Christ’s Four Gospels are summed up in only four words. They are: “Христос воскресе! Ваистину воскресе!” (Christ is Risen! Indeed He is risen!”) In each of these words is a Gospel, and in the Four Gospels is all the meaning of all God’s worlds, visible and invisible. When all knowledge and all the thoughts of men are concentrated in the cry of the Paschal salutation, “Christ is Risen!”, then immortal joy embraces all beings and in joy responds: “Indeed He is risen!”

[TER]

Celebrations across the Christian world! (share some too!)

Jerusalem: Ethiopian Orthodox worshippers hold candles during the Holy Fire ceremony at the Ethiopian section of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City April 23, 2011

Turkey: Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I leads an Easter service at the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George in Istanbul

Egypt: Coptic Orthodox priests and Egyptian Christian worshipers take part in a ceremony at the Coptic Hanging Church in the old Cairo area of Cairo, Egypt on Easter eve Saturday

Easter in St.Raguel Ethiopian Orthodox Church

Bosnian Serb Orthodox belivers light candles for their loved ones after an Easter Sunday Church service in Sarajevo, on April 24, 2011

Macedonia: Orthodox believers hold candles during a midnight Easter service in the Orthodox Christian church of Skopje

United States of America: Elderly women take part in Holy Week Ceremony

Romania: Orthodox believers visit the ossuary of Pasarea monastery shortly after the Easter religious service as local nuns lights-up candles for people who have died in Pasarea village (20km east from Bucharest) April 24, 2011

Georgia: People walk around Sioni cathedral during an Orthodox Easter service in Tbilisi

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The Truth and Power of the Resurrection

By St. Theophan the Recluse

The mind can prove the truth of the Resurrection through reason based on the scriptures, and a non-believer cannot but admit the power of its arguments, as long as a sense of truth is not yet dead in him. A believer does not need proof, because the Church of God is filled with the light of the Resurrection. Both of these indicators of truth are faithful and convincing. But counter-reasoning can spring up and contradict mind’s reason, and faith can be trampled and shaken by perplexities and doubts, coming from without and arising within.

Is there no invincible wall around the truth of the Resurrection? There is. It will occur when the power of the Resurrection, received already at baptism, begins to actively be revealed as it purges the corruption of soul and body, and establishes within them the beginnings of a new life. He who experiences this will walk in the light of the Resurrection, and anyone talking against the truth of the Resurrection will seem to him insane, like a person saying in the daytime that it is night.

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It is the Pascha; the Pascha of the Lord...O You, Who are truly all in all!The joy, the honor, the food and the delight of every creature;through You the shadows of death have fled away,and life is given to all,the gates of heaven are flung open. God becomes man and man is raised up to the likeness of God.

O divine Pascha!O Pascha, light of new splendor,The lamps of our souls will no more burn out. The flame of grace,divine and spiritual,burns in body and soul,nourished by the resurrection of Christ.

We beg You, O Christ, Lord God,eternal king of the spiritual world,stretch out Your protecting hands over Your holy Church and over your holy people;defend them, keep them, preserve them.

Raise up Your standard over usand grant that we may sing with Moses the song of victory,for Yours is the glory and the power for all eternity! Amen.

Hippolytus of Rome 3rd century

[TER]

It is appropriate and necessary that at the time the "mystery" (the Creed) is handed over (to catechumens), the "resurrection of the dead" is included. For at the time we make the confession of faith at holy baptism, we say that we expect the resurrection of the flesh. And so we believe. Death overcame our forefather Adam on account of his transgressions and like a fierce wild animal it pounced on him and carried him off amid lamentation and loud wailing. Men wept and grieved because death ruled over all the earth. But all this came to an end with Christ. Striking down death, he rose up on the third day and became the way by which human nature would rid itself of corruption. He became the first born of the dead, and the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. We who came afterward will certainly follow the first fruits. He turned suffering into joy, and we cast off our sackcloth. We put on the joy given by God so that we can rejoice and say, "where is your victory, O death?"

St. Cyril of AlexandriaCommentary on Isaiah 3.1.25

[TER]

As the Lord was going to His voluntary Passion, He was saying to His Apostles on the way: "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be delivered up, as it is written of Him." Come, therefore, and let us accompany Him with purified minds, and let us be crucified with Him, and for His sake mortify the pleasures of this life, that we may also live with Him, and hear Him declaring, "No longer do I go to the earthly Jerusalem to suffer, but I go to My Father, and your Father, to My God and your God. And I will raise you up with Me to the upper Jerusalem, in the Kingdom of Heaven."

We the faithful, having come to the saving Passion of Christ our God, let us glorify His ineffable forbearance; that through His compassion He may also raise us up, who are deadened by sin, for He is good and is the lover of mankind.

When You, O Lord, were coming to Your Passion, You gave courage to Your own Disciples, taking them aside and saying,: "How have you forgotten My words, which I spoke to you of old, as it is written, that no Prophet will be put to death, except in Jerusalem? Now, therefore, the time has come of which I told you; for behold, I am betrayed to be mocked at the hands of sinners, and they will fix Me to the Cross, delivering Me up for burial, and account Me as a corpse. But, take courage, for on the third day, I shall rise, bringing joy and life eternal to the faithful.

The Idiomela Hymns for Matins of Holy Monday

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Glory to You, our God! Glory to You!

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There’s a traditional story told from the early days of persecution in Russia that illustrates the theme of Paschal victory. An atheist lecturer came to a village, and all the inhabitants were assembled to listen to him. He explained to them at great length that there is no God, and he said at the end, “Are there any questions?” At the back of the audience the parish priest stood up and said, “I’d like to say something”. The atheist lecturer, sensing trouble, told him: “You must be very brief. I will only allow you half a minute.” “Oh,” said the priest, “I don’t need nearly as much time as that. What I wanted to say is this: “Christ is risen!” All the audience shouted back, “He is risen indeed!” Then the priest turned to the atheist lecturer with the words, “That’s all I wanted to say!” Such is our answer to the world’s misery: The risen Christ is victor over darkness and despair.

- Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia

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… just as by having shared in the washing of regeneration He became “the first-born among many brethren,” and again by having made Himself the first-fruits of the resurrection, He obtains the name of the “first-born from the dead,” so having in all things the pre-eminence, after that “all old things,” as the apostle says, “have passed away,” He becomes the first-born of the new creation of men in Christ by the two-fold regeneration, alike that by Holy Baptism and that which is the consequence of the resurrection from the dead, becoming for us in both alike the Prince of Life, the first-fruits, the first-born. This first-born, then, hath also brethren, concerning whom He speaks to Mary, saying, “Go and tell My brethren, I go to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God .” In these words He sums up the whole aim of His dispensation as Man. For men revolted from God, and “served them which by nature were no gods,” and though being the children of God became attached to an evil father falsely so called. For this cause the mediator between God and man having assumed the first-fruits of all human nature, sends to His brethren the announcement of Himself not in His divine character, but in that which He shares with us, saying, “I am departing in order to make by My own self that true Father, from whom you were separated, to be your Father, and by My own self to make that true God from whom you had revolted to be your God, for by that first-fruits which I have assumed, I am in Myself presenting all humanity to its God and Father.”

- Saint Gregory of Nyssa

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. . . by the Divine providence death has been introduced as a dispensation into the nature of man, so that, sin having flowed away at the dissolution of the union of soul and body, man, through the resurrection, might be refashioned, sound, passionless, stainless, and removed from any touch of evil. In the case however of the Author of our Salvation this dispensation of death reached its fulfillment, having entirely accomplished its special purpose. For in His death, not only were things that once were one put asunder, but also things that had been disunited were again brought together; so that in this dissolution of things that had naturally grown together, I mean, the soul and body, our nature might be purified, and this return to union of these severed elements might secure freedom from the contamination of any foreign admixture.

- Saint Gregory of Nyssa

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Since, then, there was needed a lifting up from death for the whole of our nature, He stretches forth a hand as it were to prostrate humanity, and stooping down to our dead corpse He came so far within the grasp of death as to touch a state of deadness, and then in His own body to bestow on our nature the principle of the resurrection, raising as He did by His power along with Himself the whole human being. For since from no other source than from the concrete lump of our nature had come that flesh, which was the receptacle of the Godhead and in the resurrection was raised up together with that Godhead, therefore just in the same way as, in the instance of this body of ours, the operation of one of the organs of sense is felt at once by the whole system, as one with that member, so also the resurrection principle of this Member, as though the whole of humankind was a single living being, passes through the entire race, being imparted from the Member to the whole by virtue of the continuity and oneness of the nature. What, then, is there beyond the bounds of probability in what this Revelation teaches us; viz. that He Who stands upright stoops to one who has fallen, in order to lift him up from his prostrate condition?

- Saint Gregory of Nyssa

[Krugerrand]

I was surprised to see this bumped recently, so I thought I'd share.

I had recently heard somebody suggest that the burial cloths would have been found still wrapped around where the body was. (Not was often portrayed. (above)) Thus why the disciple saw and believed: "Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."

This is the quickest explanation of the same I could find online:

“And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.” John 20:7 ‘Wrapped together’ “entulisso” in Greek, means ‘twisted’ or ‘wound up’. What these two men saw was a hollow cocoon, a still-intact shape, in which the body had been wrapped, probably slumped down slightly, but obviously a hollow shape, from which the body had passed without needing to unwind the cloth. And at the head was another spiral, which had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. If the men had seen grave clothes strewn about they might have suspected a trick, but the undisturbed clothes indicated a miracle.
http://essays.mightymag.org/bible/details-in-the-bible/

I'm no expert on the subject and have no clue as to the merits of the quoted source or from whom I heard it originally... so take it for what it's worth.

[TER]

I was surprised to see this bumped recently, so I thought I'd share.

I had recently heard somebody suggest that the burial cloths would have been found still wrapped around where the body was. (Not was often portrayed. (above)) Thus why the disciple saw and believed: "Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."

This is the quickest explanation of the same I could find online:

“And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.” John 20:7 ‘Wrapped together’ “entulisso” in Greek, means ‘twisted’ or ‘wound up’. What these two men saw was a hollow cocoon, a still-intact shape, in which the body had been wrapped, probably slumped down slightly, but obviously a hollow shape, from which the body had passed without needing to unwind the cloth. And at the head was another spiral, which had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. If the men had seen grave clothes strewn about they might have suspected a trick, but the undisturbed clothes indicated a miracle.

I'm no expert on the subject and have no clue as to the merits of the quoted source or from whom I heard it originally... so take it for what it's worth.

I too have heard this before, that the burial clothes were found to be as described in the quote you gave above. Something akin to this:

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For, in what way could we be partakers of the adoption of sons, unless we had received from Him through the Son that fellowship which refers to Himself, unless His Word, having been made flesh, had entered into communion with us? Wherefore also He passed through every stage of life, restoring to all communion with God. … For it behooved Him who was to destroy sin, and redeem man under the power of death, that He should Himself be made that very same thing which he was, that is, man; who had been drawn by sin into bondage, but was held by death, so that sin should be destroyed by man, and man should go forth from death. For as by the disobedience of the one man who was originally molded from virgin soil, the many were made sinners, and forfeited life; so was it necessary that, by the obedience of one man, who was originally born from a virgin, many should be justified and receive salvation. Thus, then, was the Word of God made man, as also Moses says: “God, true are His works.” But if, not having been made flesh, He did appear as if flesh, His work was not a true one. But what He did appear, that He also was: God recapitulated in Himself the ancient formation of man, that He might kill sin, deprive death of its power, and vivify man; and therefore His works are true.

- St. Irenaeus