Pascha

Pascha is not the greatest item on a list of feasts; it is the thing the list exists for. The Church calls it the Feast of Feasts and does not even count it among the Twelve Great Feasts — it stands above them as their source. The name itself preaches: Pascha is the Greek form of the Hebrew Pesach, Passover, because "even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast" (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). What Israel kept as deliverance from Egypt, the Church keeps as deliverance from death itself in the Resurrection of Christ.

The whole year bends toward this night. Great Lent is forty days of preparation for it; Holy Week walks step by step to the Cross and the tomb; and every ordinary Sunday of the year is a small Pascha, kept because of this one.

The paschal services begin in darkness, close to midnight, in a church stripped of light. In most parishes the faithful receive flame from the priest's candle until the church is a field of small fires, and then everyone processes out and around the building, singing, to stand before its closed doors — the tomb. There the first "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!" is sung, the doors open, and the church, now blazing with light, erupts into Paschal Matins: the paschal canon ascribed to St. John of Damascus, censings, and the ceaseless exchange of the greeting — "Christ is risen!" "Truly He is risen!"

Near the end of Matins a sermon is read that the Church has handed down for centuries in the name of St. John Chrysostom, summoning everyone to the feast — those who fasted and those who did not: "the table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously." The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom follows in the small hours, with the opening of John's Gospel — "In the beginning was the Word" — as its Gospel reading, in many parishes proclaimed in several languages. On the afternoon of Pascha the faithful return, less rumpled, for Agape Vespers and hear the Resurrection Gospel again in every language the parish can muster.

The rule is usually stated simply: Pascha falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox — a principle associated with the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea (325), which sought one common feast for the whole Church. In practice, the Church has never chased the actual sky: both equinox and full moon are taken from ancient ecclesiastical tables, with the equinox fixed at March 21 on the Julian calendar. Because the Julian calendar now runs thirteen days behind the civil (Gregorian) one, and the old lunar tables have drifted too, the calculation often lands on a different Sunday than the Western churches' Gregorian-based reckoning.

Hence the familiar oddity: some years Orthodox Pascha and Western Easter coincide; other years Pascha falls one, four, or five weeks later. Virtually all Orthodox churches — including those that use the new calendar for fixed feasts — keep this common Julian reckoning of Pascha; the generally cited exception is the Orthodox Church of Finland, which has followed the Western date since the 1920s. However the mathematics falls, the meaning does not move: "this is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24).

Pascha refuses to end at sunrise. The week that follows — Bright Week — is one continuous feast day: fasting is suspended entirely, the royal doors of the iconostasis customarily stand open all week, and the joyful Paschal Hours replace the usual morning and evening prayers. A special loaf called the artos, stamped with the icon of the Resurrection or the Cross, is blessed on Pascha night, kept in the church through the week, and distributed to the faithful. In many traditions, kneeling and prostrations are set aside throughout the paschal season.

The season itself lasts forty days, until the eve of the Ascension — forty days in which "Christ is risen!" replaces hello, the paschal troparion opens every prayer, and the Pentecostarion carries the services toward Pentecost. The Church is insistent on this stretched-out joy for a reason Paul gives: "now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). The feast is not the anniversary of a happy ending; it is the first day of a harvest whose full gathering is still ahead.