Subdeacon Paul Feeney

The Pascha In Every Now
By Subdeacon Paul Feeney

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

Well here goes my liturgically oriented column set adrift and floating amidst these major seasons of celebration. By the time we go to press Pascha will have come and gone and it will not yet be Pentecost. Great Lent has past. Great Week has past. Bright Week has Past. It seems that most of the greatest liturgical events in our year will have past. It's done no good to complain to the publisher or the editor about our publication schedule. What is a poor liturgical column writer to do? I guess all that's left to do is find the silver lining in this liturgical cloud.

Pascha, Pascha, Pascha! What can be said of you post-paschally?

Quite a bit actually. The reason for that is this: There is a Pascha in every Now! No, this is not the title of some clever new upscale Broadway play or musical. Its a major theological truth of our Orthodox faith that the Orthodox liturgy relentlessly pursues throughout our liturgical year.

Think hard! Let's count our Paschal Experiences.

1.Annually, we have Bright and Holy Pascha and New Week and the whole Paschal Season as found in the Pentecostarion, 50 days of it, as the Climax to Great Lent and the wonderful school of repentance contained in its Triodion.

2.Weekly, Every Sunday of the year is a Pascha, The Lord's Day of Resurrection is the Christian Sabbath, complete with Resurrectional Tones of the Stichera, Apostika Stichera, Troparia, Evlogataria, "Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ...", Canons, etc. at Vespers, Matins and Divine Liturgy.

3. Feastally, quite a few of the Great Feasts have pronounced Paschal motifs and not so subtle Paschal nuances flowing through them: The Winter Pascha of Christ's Holy Nativity and Theophany, Transfiguration, Exaltation of the Cross, The Holy Dormition etc.

4. Liturgically, Pascha is the theme and central point of many of the prayers, Troparia, Canons, etc. in every Orthodox Liturgical service.

5. Eucharistically, at every Divine Liturgy we have the Paschal Presence of the Risen Lord who shows Himself Risen from the Dead and trampling down death by death under the signs of His all holy precious and life-giving Body and Blood immolated in Love for us. This is why the Mystery of Holy Communion is a proof of the Resurrection for the Orthodox Church.

6. Baptismally, the Holy Mysteries of Illumination in Christ (Baptism, Chrismation, Holy Communion) makes Pascha the mainspring of our life as a Christian. We are Baptized into a Death like His so that we may partake of His Holy Resurrection.(Romans 6:3-11.) In this Christening, we are " Christed! " We are joined to the Risen Lord in Whom is eternally fixed His saving death for us. We are grafted into Him. Mystically, we die with Him and we rise with Him. He, the Risen One, lives in us, and we, His redeemed, Live by His Resurrectional Eternal Life in Him, and because of Him. "And Because I Live, You will Live" ( John 14:19 ) .

This listing, while not exhaustive, certainly points to a fact of our Orthodox Liturgical and Sacramental Life: Pascha is the Center of our Christian Life and the way we meet, partake of, participate in, and worship the all holy and life creating Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Pascha is the Pulse of our life with God the Trinity. Pascha is the heartbeat of our life in God and God's life in us and with us. Christ has become our Pascha. Pascha is how the Risen Christ now lives His Trinitarian Life. Pascha is how the Risen Christ now lives in us. And Pascha is supposed to be how we respond in love to the Risen Christ living in us and bringing us into the inner lovelife of the All Holy Trinity.

Furthermore, by all these Paschal Experiences of an Orthodox Life, God the Holy Spirit, through the Liturgy of the Church is telling us about , promoting, and actualizing our personal relationship to Pascha. This means that Our whole life and experience as Orthodox Christians is an essentially Paschal Experience, a living Pascha, a Paschal Life. It is Paschal because Christ's Pascha is constantly at work in us, His Dying, His Rising. "Always wherever we may be, we carry with us in our bodies the Dying of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may be revealed. While we are still alive we are constantly being delivered to death for the sake of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal flesh." (2 Corinthians 4:10-11.) Thus, the Liturgical-Sacramental life of the Church is supposed to do something with us, in us, for us, and through us. Immersing us in, fostering in us, and sustaining this Pascha in us, is what the Liturgical-Sacramental life does with us. But it does this only if and when we are willing to give ourselves to it by Faith, cooperate with it by Hope, and go with its divine flow by Love. These are the conditions for knowing and living the Pascha in every now.

Through the Liturgical-Sacramental life we are called by God to have a new mind, a transformed Paschal consciousness, a specifically Paschal attiditude, and a definitely Paschal point of view: " Have this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus...he became obedient unto death...on a cross...and God has raised him high..." (Philipian 2:6-11) By this "mind of Christ" in us, we can always be knowing the Pascha in every now.

We should expect this because :"All who have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ." (Galatians 3:27) The Christ that we have put on is the Living, Risen Christ, Who is the "Lamb Who was Slain before the foundation of the world" and yet lives, seated on the Throne (Revelation 13:8 ). It is in Christ, our Pascha, that we live and move and have our being. It is from His Crucified-Risen Body that we receive the Holy Spirit, Who makes us alive with the Life of Christ's Resurrection, the Eternal Life of the Kingdom of God, in which we now partake, and which is already in progress in us. It is by the power of this Risen Life that Christ, by the Holy Spirit, puts to death all that is not of God in us.

This Grace of the Holy Spirit indwelling in us (Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 3:16), internally anointing us and constantly chrismating us," Christing" us, makes us, at least by potential if not by practice, a living Heaven on Earth. Why? Because this Grace of the Holy Spirit deifies us, in body, mind, and spirit, if we willingly cooperate with His action, if we synergize with His divine energy through our pure hearted good will to do God's Will in all things. This opens us to find by the Spirit, in Christ, the Pascha in every now. The Spirit leads us to find the Cross and Resurrection in everything that presents itself to us in our daily life.

If we live by Faith, this causes a constant dying and rising in our fallen intellects and personalities, which would otherwise be easily swayed by the attractions of the world , the flesh, and the devil. In this way, by Faith through the Grace of the All Holy Spirit, we put on and have the mind of Christ in us ( 1 Corinthians 2:16). This continuing dying and rising of the intellect by Faith makes it constantly partake of Pascha. This constant dying and rising by Faith causes our whole being and our whole life to put on Christ and live by the Spirit, so that the life we live, we live no longer for ourselves, but for God
( 2 Corinthians 5:14-15). By the Spirit, this constant dying and rising in Christ makes us dead to sin and alive unto God (Romans 6:11). This is the Pascha inherent , hidden, and living in every now .

Due to this Paschal potential for every moment of our lives, in our every now St. Paul tells us, " God is rich in mercy because of His great love for us, he brought us to life with Christ when we were dead in sin. By this Grace you were saved. Both with and in Christ he raised us up and gave us a place in the heavens, seated together with and in Christ in the heavenly high places." ( Ephesians 2:4-6) "Since you have been raised up in company with Christ, set your heart on what pertains to higher realms where Christ is seated at God's right hand. Be intent upon things above rather than on worldly things. After all, you have died! Your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ our life appears, then you shall appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3: 1-4) This is no small order for us who live in the busy hub bub of a secular society and its high pressure, high stress, business world and lifestyle. Yet, even in this world, by setting our hearts on God and his Kingdom due to the Power of Pascha living in us, we are drawn to find God in the details of every now.

By the power of the Pascha in every now , along with St. Paul, each of us can say "let me glory in nothing but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom I am crucified to the world and the world is crucified to me" (Galatians 6:14-16)

Nothing in us or our lives eludes the light and touch of Pascha living in us, and transforms every now into a loving encounter with Christ, the Crucified-Risen Lord, loving us, living and loving in us, and we, living and loving in Him, alive unto God. The mystery of our lives are filled with and transformed by the Paschal mystery of His life living within us, dying and rising anew and loving through us. "...to live for God...I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I now live is not my own: Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me." (Galatians 2:19-20) "If God has loved us so, we must have the same love for one another...God is Love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him." 1John 4:11, 16. God is Love! And this Love is the meaning of life, and every moment is the moment of Love, a Paschal moment, a Paschal now. This Love is the Power of the Pascha in every now! When Pascha lives and loves in us, God the Trinity lives and loves in us, and with us, and through us. By this Paschal love we are truly alive unto God.

"And Because I Live, You will Live!" Christ Jesus, our true God, risen from the dead, and trampling down death by death, is the Pascha in our every now! In Him and by His Pascha, may you always be seated in the heavenly high places, alive unto God! Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

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