{"id":8632,"date":"2023-04-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/posts\/the-end-in-the-beginning\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T08:49:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T05:49:41","slug":"the-end-in-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/reflections\/the-end-in-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"The End in the Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have reached the end. You do know that this day, Holy Saturday, is, historically, a favorable day for the baptism of new believers. Why does the beginning (baptism) take place at the end? Today\u2019s event, that is, the theme of today\u2019s feast (Descent into Hades), reveals that baptism is a communion with Christ\u2019s death and resurrection, that is, a good call to live the end at the beginning. This does not concern only those who seek baptism, which we now perform on more than one day, but also concerns everyone who has been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Everyone who has been baptized is called to remember that we come up to eternity here and now, to remember and to remind. Fasting until Pascha was also in order to activate this memory, the memory of awareness and service. Nothing is greater than this introduction to what Pascha will tell us tomorrow: \u201cYou who are baptized, arise to the service of the world, lift up its eyes with the saving Word to the end\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have reached the end. You do know that this day, Holy Saturday, is, historically, a favorable day for the baptism of new believers. Why does the beginning (baptism) take place at the end? Today\u2019s event, that is, the theme of today\u2019s feast (Descent into Hades), reveals that baptism is a communion with Christ\u2019s death ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[1731,2405,2404,1293,394],"class_list":["post-8632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-baptism","tag-descent-into-hades","tag-holy-saturday","tag-orthodox-christian-life","tag-pascha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8967,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8632\/revisions\/8967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}