Holy Pascha
2008 April 27
It’s about 4 am. We got home from our first Pascha service about 3:30 am. It was absolutely stunning! The candles, the songs, the priest banging on the church door with the cross, the choir, the flowers. Amazing!
We sang this great song over and over throughout the service as we held our candles above our heads:
“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death,
And upon those in the tomb, bestowing life!”
Now we’re exhausted and will try to sleep for several hours and re-energize before the Agape Service at 2 pm and the Pascha party at 4 pm.
Below are a few pictures I snapped with my cell phone during the Pascha service.
And now I’m off to bed.
I was roaming through the posts and I just noticed something in one of those photos that I truly love. The Cross has the traditional sign on the upper part, which, instead of the scriptural INRI (latin) / INBI (greek), it has the phrase “Ο Βασιλεύς της Δόξης” that is, “The King of Glory”. It’s so meaningful and so different from what people usually consider glorious… It points out that Jesus Christ showed his divine glory in the outmost intensity while crucified.
You make a great point, Sean. At that moment upon the cross, Jesus is fullest revelation of God’s glory. It is very opposite of what we assume “glorious” to mean. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.