To celebrate the great Pascha of the Lord is to accept the life freely bestowed upon us, and to extend its light into our lives day by day. For Christ is truly risen. This defines the value of existence in a world given the calling to strive to belong to God alone.
One characteristic of the extension of Pascha's light, then, is our realization that we belong to God first and foremost. And our belonging to God means that God, abiding in us, now desires to dwell nowhere else but within us. This does not imply a separation from ecclesial life; rather, it perpetually calls for it. For the Paschal Christian is one who never allows himself to forget, even for a moment, that the power of the Resurrection endures within us through our integration into the life of the community of brethren.
We shall draw from the lights of Pascha three Gospel examples that show us how the power of Pascha continues to flow within us.
The first of these examples is what occurred in the incident of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). In our reading of this account, we are accustomed to seeing it as an image of the life-giving Eucharistic event. The Lord, who appeared to two of His disciples, walked with them on the road, taught them, and then made Himself known to them in the breaking of the bread, before He vanished from their sight. However, this reading, for all the significance of its meanings, presupposes that we follow the light of its extension. That is, after the disciples recognized Jesus, "they rose that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, ‘The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!’ And they told what had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread." This shows that these two disciples, before the Lord met them on the road to Emmaus, had decided that the crucifixion and death of Jesus had ended everything; in other words, they had left the apostolic community. Consequently, it shows that the living Lord, by His teaching and His bread, impelled them to return to the community in Jerusalem. From what we have quoted here, we can observe that the disciples in Jerusalem were proclaiming that the Lord had risen, and that those returning to them shared in the testimony of this proclamation. Thus, Pascha means that we continually realize that God’s life is strengthened within us by our unwavering commitment to the life of the brethren, and subsequently by the harmony of our witness to our living God.
It is also in the nature of Pascha’s extension that we live in purity, awaiting the Lord’s coming. We all believe that the Lord renewed us by His Pascha. This is true. But this truth requires of us that we ourselves sever any alliance with sin.
When John the Evangelist recounted the appearance of Jesus to His disciples on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, he introduced it thus: "He showed Himself in this way. Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together" (John 21:1-2). What did we intend by quoting this narrative after an introduction that urges us to see the extension of Pascha in our perpetual choice of purity? What we intended is revealed by the order of the names. Let us review: Peter, then Thomas, then Nathanael… Of course, we might see this as a natural order. In the sense that Peter, in other scenes where he appears, is consistently presented first by the Gospel tradition. However, this does not prevent us from noting here that Peter is the one who denied Jesus, and Thomas is the one who doubted Him. The order, from this perspective, begins with those who had sinned, and repented to God. Here too, we must see that the love of repentance, that is, the constant choice for purity which the living Lord has granted us, endures for us only through our integration into the life of the brethren. Peter, then Thomas, then Nathanael, who was described as one "in whom there is no guile" (John 1:47), then the sons of Zebedee, John the beloved and his brother James… It is an icon of the community that has understood that the newness of Pascha is a choice that endures for us by our acknowledging ourselves as beloved sinners (or repenting sinners) within a fellowship of brethren whose entire concern is to await the Lord's appearance in His glory.
Then, Pascha extends through our acceptance of the Lord as our partner in all the pain, injustice, and oppression that befalls us on earth.
We all remember the incident of the Lord's appearance to His disciples once, and then again after Thomas the Apostle insisted on seeing the wounds of His crucifixion: the marks of the nails and the spear (see: the Gospel for Thomas Sunday). We will not dwell on what these two appearances, which occurred on a Sunday, signify regarding the Lord enriching us with His Pascha beyond the Eucharistic encounter (the Divine Liturgy). Rather, we will embrace the wonderful indication within them that the Lord consented to condescend to share in everything with us, except sin.
If we examine these two appearances closely, we may not clearly see that Thomas, in his request, wanted to ascertain that the Lord is our partner in everything. His request aimed to touch, with his own hand, the reality that Christ had truly risen. But does what we ask for limit the extent of the Lord’s revelations? Christian tradition has unanimously agreed that the marks of Christ’s Passion, which remained on His illumined body, are a radiant sign that His supreme will is for us to realize that He bears our sufferings with us. Usually, in times of pain and oppression, we desire the Lord to rescue us. And this is a good and legitimate desire. But the living Christ, while wanting us to maintain this desire, awaits for us to ascend to the understanding that He is with us in times of suffering and at other times. For the problem of suffering, such as that caused by illness, is not confined to the physical or psychological pains it leaves behind, but also appears in the terrible vortex of isolation into which it draws us. Therefore, Pascha, extended, means that we draw from the truth of Christ’s Resurrection the reality that He is now with us, with us always.
In this great Pascha, Jesus shattered for us all the darkness of our separation, our sin, and our isolation. These, which are a form of death, the Lord took upon Himself, and He wrote upon our bodies, with the ink of His blood, that we belong to Him. To celebrate Pascha is beautiful. But what is more beautiful is to live in a perpetual feast. More beautiful still is to carry with us into our days the truth that the Lord has quickened us from every darkness that lies in wait for us, or strikes us. And most beautiful of all is to revel in the expanse of this beauty, and to believe that, through Him, we have become children of the Light.
