These
three days, which the Church calls Great and Holy have within the liturgical
development of Holy Week a very definite purpose. They place all its
celebrations into the perspective of End; they remind us of the eschatological
meaning of Pascha.
So often
the Holy Week is considered one of the "beautiful traditions" or "customs", a
self evident "part" of our calendar. We take it for granted and enjoy it as a
cherished annual event which we have observed since our childhood. We admire
the beauty of its services, the pageantry of its rites and, last but not least,
we like the fuss about the Paschal table. Then when all this is done, we resume
our normal life. But do we understand that when the world rejected its Saviour,
when "Jesus began to be sorrowful and very heavy… and his soul was exceedingly
sorrowful even unto death," when He died on the Cross, "normal life" came to
its .
For they
were "normal" men who shouted, "Crucify Him!", who spat on Him and nailed Him
to the Cross. They hated and killed Him precisely because He was troubling
their normal life. It was indeed a perfectly "normal" world which preferred
darkness and death to light and life. By the death of Jesus, this "normal"
world, this "normal" life was irrevocably condemned, or rather, they revealed
their true and abnormal nature ie their inability to receive the – "Now is the
judgement of this world." (John 12:31). The Pascha (Passover) of Jesus
signified its end to “this world” and it has been at its end since then. This
end can last for hundreds of centuries; this does not alter the nature of time
in which we live as the "last time." The "fashion of this world passes away…"(1
Corinthians 7:31).
CONVERSATION