Fragments for Friday

Source: orthodoxroad.com

 Christ is Risen!

Today we should give thought to one important thing that not everyone remarks upon when turning to Holy Scripture, when reading about those bright days during which the Lord appeared after His Resurrection. He appeared to many, and to each person differently. In one circumstance it was the weeping Mary Magdalene, lonely and grieving at the empty tomb; in another it was Peter, bewildered and confused, having returned from the garden where He had found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then we see the disciples on the sea. John senses Him in his heart and recognizes Him, while Peter throws himself into the sea and hurries to Him. And, as we read in the epistles of the Apostle Paul, among the last to whom the Lord appeared was he, Paul-Saul, who had persecuted the Church of God. 

This continues even now. Christ, risen invisibly, appears tangibly to each person. In the lives of each of us who has felt the proximity of other worlds if only for a moment, a meeting with the Risen Lord.

Fr. Alexander Men

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Fr. Alexander was an Orthodox priest who was brutally murdered in 1990. Born Jewish but raised Christian, he and his mother were part of the underground church in Russia. He was instrumental in speaking to a new generation of young people, and he brought many back to the Church.

Fragments for Friday

Source: oca.org

 CHRIST IS RISEN!  INDEED HE IS RISEN!

Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship the holy Lord Jesus, the only sinless One ...

It is already Bright Friday, but I would like to look back at Holy Week and Pascha - just celebrated last week! Thus, we have so recently completed our annual celebration of Holy Week and Pascha after the forty days of Great Lent. I have now served this, the "Feast of Feasts," here in the parish from 1990-2025. That would include our "Covid Pascha" of 2020, during in which only three of us - Presvytera Deborah, Ralph Sidway, and I - served the entire Holy Week and Pascha alone when Covid restrictions were at their peek. That is now thirty-five years, and it remains a joy to be able to continue serving this great annual feast on behalf of, and with all of the faithful of our parish. 

There is always the danger that each annual celebration can simply become indistinguishable from all the others, as they are the same in terms of structure and content. But each year is unique and it is that uniqueness that fills us with the energy and effort to make the Pascha we are serving as fresh and enlivening as possible. Or rather, it is the presence of Christ that accomplishes that on our behalf.

The Feast of Pascha is meant for the entire parish community: the clergy, the servers, the choir and the congregation of the faithful. Each person has his/her ministry within the parish. Truly a communal effort as we assemble together as the local Body of Christ to praise the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. There are different levels of reality, but at the apex of those levels is Christ crucified and risen. Only the paschal mystery brings meaning to the rest of our lives and to our final destiny of life with God. 

The holy doors on the iconostasis have remained open all during Bright Week, to visually express the reality of the Kingdom of God, "open" to us all and in our midst. Those holy doors will be closed on Saturday right before we begin Great Vespers as we bid farewell to Bright Week and as a bit of the light of the Resurrection begins to dim as we move away from the "night brighter than the day." So, we most always translate the visible to the invisible interior of our minds and hearts; and the outward to the inward. That leads us to examine our faith and ask ourselves where the treasure of our heart is.

As the incomparable Canon of Pascha announces to us:

Let us purify our senses and we shall see Christ shining in the unapproachable light of His resurrection. We shall clearly hear Him say: Rejoice, as we sing the song of victory.