Christ is risen! Pascha 2014

April 20, 2014

Bulletin April 27, 2014

If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain. — St Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 15:14)

Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death,
and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!
— Troparion for Pascha

About the icon “The Descent into Hades”

Christ, vested in the brilliance of His divine power, who ascends from Hades, and, with Him, Adam and Eve, in whom the whole of fallen mankind is personified, mankind which since the Fall has been locked into the universal cemetary of Hell. . . . We are able to see the revelation of the Redemption’s inner, eternal, and mystical reality, whose first fruit was shown to the world in the Resurrection of Christ, the same reality which is to come in His Second Coming. . . .

The center of the Icon, its key, lies in the meeting of the hands of Adam and the Savior. The gesture with which Christ restores Adam and Eve to life is full of great love and tenderness. He . . . lifts him up with such gentleness as only a parent can express, helping his child to get up after a fall. Christ thus reveals to Adam and Eve, and to us, the love of a Father — His Father — so that to all “who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God” (John 1:12).

— Text from The Light of Christ: Iconography of Gregory Kroug, by Fr. Andrew Tregubov, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press

We welcome everyone to join us during this time as we continue to celebrate the joy of the Lord’s triumph over death. In the Orthodox Church the week after Pascha, the Day of Christ’s Holy Resurrection, is called “Bright Week”.