HAPPY EASTER

Everybody knows Easter is a movable holiday.  For the western churches Easter falls between March 22 and April 25.  The reason in the western church is because Easter is always the first Sunday after the full moon of the spring equinox.  The spring equinox is always March 20 or 21.

 The calculation is a little different in the Eastern Orthodox churches, because they use the Julian Calendar, and Easter must fall after the Jewish Passover to be line with the resurrection story as told in the gospels.  Th Jewish faith follows the Nisan calendar which is based on the cycles of the moon.  The Jewish Passover always starts on the 15th day of Nisan (in Israel and Reformed Jews / 22nd for all other Jews), the seventh month of the Jewish calendar.  This is then balanced against the Julian calendar and the spring equinox.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church Easter is the most important of the Christian Holidays far out shining Christmas.  According to the Eastern Orthodox theology Christmas is when Christ became human and walked among his people.  Easter on the other hand is when Christ sacrificed himself for the forgiveness of all mankind’s sins and brought us the gift of eternal life.

The Easter celebration observances start with the beginning of Lent and follow through until the start of Holy Week on Psalm Sunday.  There are prayers and fasting during Holy Week which ends with midnight church services on Saturday night.  The fasting ends on Easter Sunday with church services, family gatherings and feasting traditionally including roasted lamb and sweet breads.

The complete image is often shown as an icon, Christ Rising From the Dead.  This photo is from a fresco in the Church of the Annunciation, at the Žitomislić Monastery in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was taken when we visited the monastery in May 2019.

It has taken a fair bit of research but the story being told in the painting is:

Jesus is rising from the dead which makes it a resurrection image, but becomes a more involved story, typical of most Byzantian art. 

We see Jesus lifting two bodies from death, Adam on the left and Eve on the right, with the message that the resurrection we gain through Christ’s resurrection, will cover all of humanity. 

The golden sheets Jesus stands on represent the entrance to Hell which Jesus has broken to free those who have died.  Notice that within the blackness of Hell, float chains and tools which have bound us in life and were carried with us into the afterlife.

On the left we see three people with halos.  The two farthest from Jesus are King David and King Solomon, two of Jesus’ ancestors.  The halo closest to Jesus belongs to John the Baptist who when he baptized Jesus marked the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. 

On the right of Jesus are three figures, usually representing the prophets from the Old Testament such as Moses, Abel the shepherd or the three youths thrown into the furnace in the Book of Daniel.

Finally we have the light surrounding Jesus.  The blue light is called the Mandorla and represents the uncreated, eternal light of Christ.  It is not simply a light, it is the Light of God which lights the way in the darkness.  It is the light which shown from Christ during the transfiguration.  It is the Light which existed when the world was formed before Christ existed in human form.

The complete detail of the interpretation can be found at:

https://www.orthodoxroad.com/christs-descent-into-hell-icon-explanation/