“Shine, Shine, New Jerusalem”: The Spirit of the Pentecostarion
by Rev. Dr. PATRICK BAUMGARTH
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amilies of liturgical rites are akin to languages. The western Catholic Church has made so many changes to its liturgical calendar within the past century, by pruning it of what some would call clutter, that if it were a language, it would most closely resemble Esperanto. On the other hand, the organically developing tongues, such as French, Italian, and Russian, are more analogous to the Orthodox Liturgy.
early as the first century. The original Paschal service was written by the early bishop Melito of Sardis, and it seems to be more ancient than St. John’s Gospel. It was a prayerful commentary on scriptural readings, such as the passages in Exodus relevant to the Passover, the creation account in Genesis, and Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac. These passages continue to be read in both the Orthodox service of Great Saturday and in its Roman Catholic counterpart.
those who commemorated it once a year, no matter what the day of the week, and those celebrating it weekly on Sunday. The early Roman Christians apparently didn’t know about the yearly commemoration, but only the Sunday observance. When Rome began such a yearly commemoration, it connected this with a Sunday. Eventually the first Council of Nicea declared it should be done this way everywhere.
Pascha, the Feast of feasts, the Celebration of celebrations, is the template for all other feasts of the Orthodox Church. Every feast has a pre-festal period (similar to Lent), the celebration of the feast itself (like Pascha), and an after-feast (think of Bright Week). This model took centuries to develop. Originally, the preparation for Pascha included only Holy Week, and the 40-day fast commemorating the Lord’s sojourn in the wilderness—what we now know as Lent—happened right after Theophany. Later the fast was moved to the spring. Also, in the ancient world, the festal continuation of Paschal joy, where we don’t fast or kneel, extended from Pascha itself to the Sunday of Pentecost.
An early dispute arose regarding when to celebrate the Paschal Service: at the very hour the Jews were celebrating Passover, or after the Jewish Seder—the meal that marks the beginning of Passover—was completed. At any rate, the Christians, just as the Jewish observers of Passover, would have fasted all day until the conclusion of their nocturnal celebration. That celebration included lessons from the Scriptures, a Eucharistic rite, and a festive meal. When, much later, the Paschal rite was permanently assigned to a Sunday, that fasting characterized the preceding Saturday: hence the tradition that Great and Holy Saturday is the only Saturday of the year requiring fasting.
The week after Pascha maintains its resurrectional tone, both for the Orthodox, who term it Bright Week, and for the Westerners. The Sunday after Pascha is kept both in the West (where it was termed “Low Sunday”) and by the Orthodox as a commemoration of St. Thomas’s encounter with the Resurrected Lord.
Historical records show that Christians may have celebrated some version of Pascha as
The major dispute about the Paschal celebration seemed to have been between
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Great feasts on the Orthodox liturgical calendar are accompanied by a Synaxis, commemorating saints associated with that feast. But we can’t do a synaxis immediately after Pascha, because we’re busy with Bright Week and Thomas Sunday. So we wait until the third Sunday after Pascha to remember the Myrrhbearers, Joseph, and Nicodemus. At the conclusion of the third week, we leave behind the commemoration of the empty tomb.
