Death During Bright Week

http://peterspilgrimage.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html
Icon found in Benaki Museum in Athens

"The last enemy to be rendered powerless is death."--1 Cor 15:26

On Great and Good Friday, the mother of our parish's founder fell asleep in the Lord, and her funeral was today.  Yet a funeral during Bright Week is less a time of mourning than a triumphal celebration.  It is a common saying that a Christian who falls asleep or else his funeral during Bright Week is taken immediately to Heaven, for it is during that week that all of creation is aglow, radiating the triumphal light of the Resurrection.  Thus the typical hymns of sorrow are replaced with those of victory: "Christ is risen from the dead! Shine in splendor, O New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord is risen upon you!"  Indeed, the entire Paschal Canon prayed on the Paschal morn is again prayed at a funeral.  Death is barely acknowledged, for all know that Christ has made him powerless.  He has been crushed and trampled and conquered, with his own gates pressing into his back while his captives enter into Heaven in his very sight.  All this occurred at what he thought was the time of his final triumph, when God Himself had entered his grasp: yet the Christ was not subject to corruption, and the bait Death swallowed was his own undoing, as so many of the Fathers painted the image.  "He sought the bait of the flesh, but was hooked by the divinity" (St. Gregory the Dialogist).  Truly did St. Ephraim speak: "Death knelt before Him in Sheol, / and Life worshipped Him at His Resurrection."

Why should we mourn, when we have before our eyes the image of the Resurrection and have ringing in our ears the triumphal hymns?  While we are apart in body, we miss our departed loved ones, but it is not forever, if we are faithful: for the ones who are faithful and endure to the end are saved from death and join the angels in ascending and descending before the throne of God.  At that time, we will be united once more for all the saints, whether canonized or not, who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith; the separation is but temporary, and the union is eternal.  "Do not imagine, Death, that you are death, for you are like a shade" (St. Ephraim).  While for most of the year we focus more on the sorrow of their departure, and we offer many earnest prayers that God be merciful to them, accept their repentance, and welcome them into His Kingdom, during this week the light of Christ's Resurrection overpowers the sorrow, and we know His mercy is abounding in an exceedingly wondrous measure.  Death has been abolished, destroyed, stripped of his power, and so we rejoice, and those who have fallen asleep rejoice too, for all, from our first parents to us, have been granted life eternal, if we only return the Lord in faith.  With St. Hilary, then, let us say that "death seemed only a name for eternal life."

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, O Eva,
Paschal light doth shine on thee!
Hades' strong chains of yore are broken,
Ye are free in Christ's vict'ry!

The bells in all the Churches joyous
Ring to proclaim your freedom!
Of mankind's foes the last enemy
Is destroyed in Christ's Kingdom!

From all our souls now flee, O Sorrow!
No place have you in this time!
The just ones of all ages past
Enter now the joy sublime!

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, O Eva,
Father, Son, and Spirit do,
Theotokos with them, extend you
Welcome into rest all true!

http://rebelsprite.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/hope-for-adam/

Nota Bene: The quote from St. Gregory the Dialogist (Pope St. Gregory the Great) is from his The Grace of God §8.  The first quote from St. Ephraim is from his Hymns on the Resurrection 1.8, found in Hymns, translated by Kathleen E. McVey as part of the Classics of Western Spirituality series (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989).  The second quote from St. Ephraim is from his Nisibene Hymns 53.4, translated by J.T. Sarsfield Stopford, found in volume 13 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890).  The quote from St. Hilary (of Poitiers) is from his On the Trinity I.14, translated by E.W. Watson and L. Pullan, found in volume 9 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1899), as found on Kevin Knight's New Advent.
 

Text ©2014 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Discuss the Eastern Church: A Grammatical Primer

Image
"To count the terms used in theology as of primary importance, and to endeavor to trace out the hidden meaning in every phrase and in every syllable, is a characteristic wanting in those who are idle in the pursuit of true religion, but distinguishing all who get knowledge of the mark of our calling...The beginning of teaching is speech." --St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit I.2 I've often written here of the need to reclaim the Church's bipulmonary nature, that is, the fact that she has two lungs, as Pope Bl. John Paul II loved to say, the West and the East.  I've recently realized that just having people mention the Eastern Church is not enough (though it is certainly a great start): people must also know what they're talking about in regards to Eastern Christianity.  One of the greatest aspects that needs to be cleared up is simply the matter of terminology.  Thus I here attempt to give a quick grammatical primer on terms that are often
Read more

St. Gregory Palamas on the Graven Images

Image
"You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Ex 20:4-5a). God's forbidding of graven images is a part of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) that I do not hear mentioned often among Catholics. Since the Decalogue does not have a strict division in the Scriptures themselves, there are multiple ways to divide them. The division commonly used by the Orthodox and most Protestants lists "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me" and "You shall not make for yourself a graven image" as two separate commandments, while combining "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods" and "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" into one commandment. The division commonly used by Catholics and ma
Read more

Franciscan Fasting

Image
 "Induebar cilicio, humiliabam in ieiunio animam meam, et oratio mea ad sinum meum revertetur." "I wore sackcloth, I afflicted myself with fasting.  I prayed with head bowed on my bosom."--Ps 35:13. No Christian life is without suffering, for Christ suffered.  Even the most joyful Christian recognizes the necessity of suffering, whether voluntary or no.  The Seraphic Father, St. Francis of Assisi, was no different in this regard.  Yet so many portray him as solely a lover of God's creation (which he most assuredly was).  How many know of his tears, his tears so plentiful that they ran furrows in his cheeks, that they took away his sight?  Who knows of his public self-deprecation when he took a spoonful of meat broth while fasting?  Who knows of his flight into a thorn bush to conquer the passions of the flesh? St. Francis was not just a man of joy who loved God's creation, but he was a man who suffered for the Lord, who mortified himself for t
Read more