On the Paschal Feast (complete)

Perhaps it would not be out of season to treat once again of the Pascha, handed down from of old to the children of the Hebrews in images. When the Hebrews, performing the shadows of things to come, first celebrated the feast of the Phasekh, a beast was taken by them from the flock (this was a lamb or a sheep); then they themselves sacrificed it with their own hands; and then each first smeared the lintels and doorposts of his own house with the blood, thus marking their dwellings with blood to turn back the destroyer. Using its flesh for food, with their loins girded with a belt, partaking of the food of unleavened bread and taking bitter herbs, they passed from place to place, from the land of the Egyptians to the wilderness. These things were laid down for them to do together with the slaughter and eating of the sheep. From this they fulfilled their crossing-feast out of Egypt. But these things happened to them as types, and were written for our sake. And Paul interprets them, showing the truth of the ancient symbols, when he says: “For Christ our Pascha has been sacrificed.” And the Baptist presents the reason for his being sacrificed, saying: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” For the saving body was handed over to death as a sacrifice to avert all evils, which, as a purifying offering, took away the sin of the whole world. So Isaiah cries out clearly: “This one bears our sins and suffers pain for us.”

Nourished by the rational flesh of this saving sacrifice, which ransomed the whole human race by its own blood, that is, by the teachings and words that proclaim the kingdom of heaven, we rightly enjoy the delight that is according to God. And by faith in his blood, which he gave in exchange as a ransom for our salvation, marking the houses of the soul, our bodies, we drive away from ourselves every race of plotting demons; and, celebrating the feast of the crossing, we practise crossing over to divine things, as having long ago passed from Egypt to the wilderness. In this way we too set out on a journey untrodden and deserted by the many, banishing from the soul the old leaven of godless error, and taking the true bitter herbs through a bitter and painful way of life. And the season of the feast is well chosen: it is not set in the middle of winter, for that is gloomy; nor would it have been suitable in midsummer, when the burning solstice strips away the beauty from those who spend their leisure in the fields. Spring excels the other seasons, not wavering between them in an equal share; for at the turning of autumn the sight is not delightful, the land being bereft and its own fruits gone; but spring leads the whole year like the head of a body, when the sun has just traversed its first section and the course of night is changed into bright day. It brings to an end the crashings of winter, it brings to an end the long nights, it changes the waters. And now, with fresh clear sky, it makes the seas calm for sailors and gives fair weather to travellers on land. At this time the lands in the fields are pregnant with seeds, and the plants, swelling with fruits and rejoicing in God's gifts, give the farmers in blessings the returns for their labours.

This season of the feast brought destruction to the Egyptians, the friends of demons, and procured freedom from evils for the Hebrews, who kept the feast to God. It was that very season which had been observed at the first creation of the universe, when the earth sprouted, when the lights came to be, when heaven and earth and all that is in them were brought forth. At this season too the Saviour of the whole world fulfilled the mystery of his own feast, and the great luminary illuminated the inhabited world with the rays of piety; and the season seems to contain the birthday of the world. At this season the type too was performed, the ancient Pascha, which is also called the crossing-feast; it bore the symbol of the slaughter of a sheep, and it hinted at the image in the food of unleavened bread. All these things were fulfilled together at the saving feast; for then he himself was the sheep, in respect of the body he wore. He is also the sun of righteousness, the divine and saving spring indeed, which turned the life of men from worse to better. On the demons of the Egyptians even now God-driven scourges are sent down, while peoples dwelling everywhere on earth celebrate their freedom from much-wandering godlessness. The spirits that led the peoples astray having ceased, and the winter of evils, an abundance of new fruits crowns the church of God with the various gifts of the Holy Spirit; and, simply, every race of men has been changed over to what is ours. All lands, having received the cultivation of the soul from the Word, the husbandman, have sprouted the seasonable flowers of virtue; and, freed from the evils of darkness, we have been counted worthy of the light of the knowledge of God in the day.

Such are the new teachings, long ago overshadowed by symbols but now newly uncovered to the light. And we too rekindle the chief part of the feast each year in the circuits of the cycles, taking up beforehand, as a pre-feast for preparation, the forty-day discipline, following the zeal of the saints Moses and Elijah, and renewing the feast itself for an unforgettable age. Setting out, then, on the journey to God, we gird our loins well with the bond of self-control, and, guarding the steps of the soul in safety, we prepare the course of the heavenly calling as though in sandals; and using the staff of the divine word, in the power of prayers, for defence against enemies, we cross with all eagerness the passage that leads to heaven, hastening from things here to heavenly things, and from mortal life to immortal. For so, when we have kept the crossing-feast well and nobly, another, greater feast will receive us from here, which the children of the Hebrews call by the name Pentecost, bearing an image of the kingdom of heaven. Moses, then, says concerning the Pascha: “When you begin to put the sickle to the harvest, you shall set loaves from the new harvests before God.” He showed by a prophetic type the harvest as the calling of the nations, and the new loaves as the souls offered to God through Christ, those from the nations, over whom the greatest feast is held to God who loves mankind. We, reaped by the rational sickles of the apostles, gathered together into one, as into a threshing floor, into the churches everywhere on earth, made into one body by the harmonious disposition of faith, seasoned with the salt of the teachings from the divine words, and reborn through water and the fire of the Holy Spirit, are offered to God through Christ as nourishing loaves, agreeable and pleasing to him.

In this way, as the prophetic symbols given through Moses pass into deeds with more solemn fulfilments, we ourselves have received the tradition of keeping the feast more brightly, as gathered together with the Saviour and enjoying his kingdom. Therefore during this feast we are no longer allowed to toil, but are taught to bear the image of the rest hoped for in heaven. So we neither bend the knee in our prayers nor wear ourselves down with fasting; for those who have been counted worthy of the resurrection according to God can no longer fall again to the ground, nor can those freed from the passions suffer the same as those still enslaved. Therefore after the Pascha we celebrate Pentecost in seven full weeks, having first played the man, during the former period, in the six weeks of the forty-day discipline before the Pascha; for the number six is practical and active, which is why God is said to have made all things in six days. The labours of that period the second feast rightly takes up in seven weeks, which the number seven is meant to signify as rest. Yet the number of Pentecost does not stop at these; going beyond the seven weeks, it seals with the unit that follows them, the last, the all-festal day of Christ's ascension. Rightly, then, in the days of holy Pentecost, depicting the rest to come, we gladden our souls and give the body rest, as being already with the Bridegroom himself and unable to fast. [That the holy evangelists recorded that the saving passion took place in the days of the Jewish Pascha of unleavened bread, no one would doubt; for this was the reason for the law spoken by Moses about the Pascha. For since the Lamb of God was going to be led as a sheep to the slaughter among the Jews themselves, and to suffer this for the common salvation of all men, at no other time than the season indicated, God, foreseeing the future, through symbols in images, at that very season which was going to arrive at some time in the cycles of the years, ordered a perceptible lamb to be sacrificed among the Jews; and this was performed by them year by year, until the truth, when it was fulfilled, set aside the old things. Hence from that time the true feast of the mysteries has prevailed among the nations, while among the Jews not even the memory of their symbols is kept, since the place in which the rites of the feast had been commanded to be performed has been taken from them. Rightly, then, the divine scripture of the Gospels says that the Saviour suffered at the time of the Jewish Unleavened Bread; since at that time too he was led as a sheep to the slaughter, as the prophecies …

Those under Moses sacrificed the paschal sheep once in the whole year, on the fourteenth of the first month, toward evening; but we of the New Covenant, celebrating our own Pascha every Lord's day, always partake of the body of the Sheep; always we have girded the loins of our soul with purity and self-control; always we have prepared our feet in the readiness of the gospel; always we have staffs in our hands and lean on the rod from the root of Jesse; always we depart from Egypt; always we pursue the solitude of human life; always we set out on the journey to God; always we celebrate the crossing-feast. For the word of the gospel wants us to do all these things not once a year but always and every day. [7] Therefore every week we celebrate the feast of our Pascha on the saving Lord's day, fulfilling the mysteries of the true Sheep, by whom we were redeemed; and we do not circumcise the body with iron, but cut away all the wickedness of the soul with the cutting word; nor do we use bodily unleavened bread, but only that of sincerity and truth. For grace, freeing us from the aged custom, has handed over to us the new man created according to God, and the new law, a new circumcision, a new Pascha, and the Jew who is one inwardly; so it has made us free also from the old seasons …

However, when the most God-beloved emperor was presiding in the midst of the holy synod, and the question about the Pascha was brought into the midst, what was said was said; but a threefold portion of the whole inhabited world prevailed by the number of its bishops, opposing from the other side those of the east. For the northern and southern nations, and those toward the setting of the sun, fortified by their agreement, pulled against those of the east who were defending the ancient custom. In the end the easterners gave way; and so one feast of Christ came to be; and so they separated themselves from the Lord-killers and were joined to those of the same belief; for nature always draws like to like. If anyone should say that it is written, “On the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came and said to the Saviour, Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Pascha? And he sent them to such a man, commanding them to say, I keep the Pascha with you,” we shall say that this is not a command, but the narrative of something that happened at the time of the saving passion. It is one thing to narrate a past action, and another to legislate and to hand down to those after …

But the Saviour too did not keep the Pascha with the Jews at the time of his own passion. For it was not when they were sacrificing the sheep that he too held his own Pascha with his disciples; for they did this on the Preparation, on which the Saviour suffered; that is why they did not enter the praetorium, but Pilate went out to them. He, on the other hand, a whole day before, on the fifth day of the week, reclined with his disciples, and, eating with them, said: “With desire I have desired to eat this Pascha with you.” Do you see how the Saviour did not eat the Pascha with the Jews? Since that was new and strange compared with the usual and Jewish customs, he of necessity made it plain, saying: “With desire I have desired to eat this Pascha with you before I suffer.” For the old customs, being old and antiquated, which he had eaten with the Jews, were not desirable; but the new mystery of his New Covenant, which he was then imparting to his own disciples, was rightly desirable to him; since many prophets and righteous men before him desired to see the mysteries of the New Covenant; and the Word himself, always thirsting for the common salvation, was handing down a mystery through which all men were going to keep the feast, and he confessed that this was desirable to him. The Pascha of Moses did not suit all the nations of that time; for how could it, since it had been commanded to be performed in one place, in Jerusalem? So it was not desirable; but the saving mystery of the New Covenant, suiting all men, was rightly desirable. [10] He himself, then, before he suffered, ate the Pascha with his disciples and kept the feast, but not with the Jews … in the evening, the chief priests, together with the betrayer, came upon him and laid their hands on him; for they themselves were not eating the Pascha in the evening; otherwise they would not have had leisure for him. And having seized him, they led him to the house of Caiaphas, where, having passed the night, when day came, they assembled and examined him first; then afterwards, rising up with the crowd, they led him to Pilate. And then, Scripture says, they did not enter the praetorium, so that, entering under a Greek roof, they might not be defiled, but, remaining pure, the wretches, when evening came, might eat the Pascha: they who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel, who, defiled in soul and body by murder against the Saviour, were afraid to go in under the roof. On that very day of the passion they ate a Pascha destructive to their own souls, demanding the saving blood not for themselves but against themselves. But our Saviour, not then but a day before, reclining with his disciples, kept the feast that was desirable to him.

Do you see how from that time he separated himself from them and withdrew from the Jewish bloodguilt, and joined himself to the disciples, keeping with them the desirable feast? So we too must eat the Pascha with Christ, cleansing our mind of all the leaven of malice and wickedness, filled with the unleavened bread of truth and sincerity, having within ourselves, in the soul, the Jew who is one inwardly and the true circumcision, and smearing the doorposts of our mind with the blood of the Sheep sacrificed for us, to turn away the destroyer from us. And this not for one circuit of the whole year, but every week. Let the Preparation be a fast for us, a symbol of mourning on account of our former sins, and in memory of the saving passion.

I say that the Jews went astray from the truth from the beginning, from the time they plotted against the Truth itself, driving the Word of life away from themselves. And the scripture of the holy Gospels shows this clearly. For it testifies that the Lord ate the Pascha on the first day of Unleavened Bread; but they, as Luke says, did not eat their customary Pascha on the day on which the Pascha had to be sacrificed, but on the day after, which was the second of Unleavened Bread and the fifteenth of the moon, on which, while our Saviour was being judged by Pilate, they did not enter the praetorium. So they did not eat it, according to the law, on the first day of Unleavened Bread, on which it had to be sacrificed; otherwise they too would have kept the Pascha with the Saviour; but from that time, together with their plot against our Saviour, blinded by their wickedness, they went astray from all truth as well. But we keep the same mysteries throughout the whole year: on every Friday making the remembrance of the saving passion by fasting, as the apostles then first fasted when the Bridegroom was taken from them; and every Lord's day being given life by the sanctified body of the same saving Pascha, and by his precious blood …