In recent
months I have come to the conclusion that the best place to understand the
significance of Pascha is in a cancer ward, or a hospice for the dying, or by a
deathbed. When one stands in any of
these terrible places, one enjoys an immunity from the lies of the world. For the world tells each one of us that we
are a race of immortals, destined never to die.
Surveying our surroundings in these places reveals that this is not so.
Both the
cosmetic industry and the funeral industry conspire in their own ways to
persuade us that we will remain young and wrinkle-free forever, and our media
cheerfully picks up and conveys this message. We know, of course, that it is nonsense, but
we buy into it anyway. Youth is
celebrated and culturally portrayed as if it is eternal, and the dead are
rarely allowed to be seen. People expire
privately in hospital rooms, and then are rushed down to the morgue. Funeral directors (there are happy
exceptions) do their best to anesthetise the survivors to the horror that is
death, and often the corpse is cremated before the funeral (now renamed the
“celebration of life”). Often in of
these services, the corpse is not present, and if it is, the casket is usually
closed. Our forefathers chanted, “In the
midst of life we are in death” (the line is from the grave-side service in the
Anglican prayerbook), but no longer. In
the midst of life we now rarely encounter death. In the old days, people died at home, and
were prepared for burial by their loving and grieving family. Now we have people for that.
All of
this culture of denial falls away from us when we survey our surroundings in
cancer ward, hospice, or by the deathbed.
Whether or not we die of cancer, all of us will die. It reminds me of the old children’s riddling
rhyme: “Doctor, doctor, will I die? Yes, my child, and so will I.” Our cultural denial notwithstanding, we are
not a race of immortals, and all of us will one day lie upon our
deathbeds. As a priest, I have stood by
a few of them. And then one realizes
afresh what Pascha really means.
Pascha is
not simply a liturgical feast, something celebrating the end of a rigorous
Great Lent. And it is not simply the
happy historical ending to our Lord’s life, an appendix added after the
crucifixion saying, “And they all lived happily ever after”. Pascha is God’s promise that the moment of
pain we endure by the deathbed is not the final word. For now we must be submerged in the horror
and obscenity of death, but God’s plan is indeed for us to be a race of
immortals, and one day this plan will be fulfilled. Hurtling down the years to our deathbed is
not a journey to oblivion but to joy.
When death’s cold hand finally closes our eyes, we will open them in
paradise, and after our body returns to the dust from which it was taken, it
will one day arise and be raised and transformed. Pascha is not simply about Christ’s happy
ending, but about ours.
If one
disbelieves in Christ and Pascha, then our cultural of denial of death makes
good sense. We can’t do anything about
the fearful fate which awaits us, so why think about it? Eat, drink, be merry, and watch
television. But if what the Church says
about Christ and Pascha is true, we don’t need the lies or the denial. We can look death in its fearful face and
smile and say with St. Paul, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Death may prowl the cancer ward or the
hospice and may roar at us as we lie on our deathbed, but it will be gone soon
enough. Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.
By Fr. Lawrence Farley
Source: http://frlawrencefarley.blogspot.com.by/2017/04/understanding-pascha.html
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