Lives of all saints commemorated on April 27

Pascha (Easter)

Enjoy ye all the feast of faith; receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.
(Sermon of Saint John Chrysostom, read at Paschal Matins)

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the center of the Christian faith. Saint Paul says that if Christ is not raised from the dead, then our preaching and faith are in vain (I Cor. 15:14). Indeed, without the resurrection there would be no Christian preaching or faith. The disciples of Christ would have remained the broken and hopeless band which the Gospel of John describes as being in hiding behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. They went nowhere and preached nothing until they met the risen Christ, the doors being shut (John 20: 19). Then they touched the wounds of the nails and the spear; they ate and drank with Him. The resurrection became the basis of everything they said and did (Acts 2-4): “. . . for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39).

The resurrection reveals Jesus of Nazareth as not only the expected Messiah of Israel, but as the King and Lord of a new Jerusalem: a new heaven and a new earth.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . the holy city, new Jerusalem. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. . . He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away (Rev. 21:1-4).

In His death and resurrection, Christ defeats the last enemy, death, and thereby fulfills the mandate of His Father to subject all things under His feet (I Cor. 15:24-26).

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing (Rev. 5: 12)

THE FEAST OF FEASTS

The Christian faith is celebrated in the liturgy of the Church. True celebration is always a living participation. It is not a mere attendance at services. It is communion in the power of the event being celebrated. It is God’s free gift of joy given to spiritual men as a reward for their self-denial. It is the fulfillment of spiritual and physical effort and preparation. The resurrection of Christ, being the center of the Christian faith, is the basis of the Church’s liturgical life and the true model for all celebration. This is the chosen and holy day, first of sabbaths, king and lord of days, the feast of feasts, holy day of holy days. On this day we bless Christ forevermore (Irmos 8, Paschal Canon).

PREPARATION

Twelve weeks of preparation precede the “feast of feasts.” A long journey which includes five prelenten Sundays, six weeks of Great Lent and finally Holy Week is made. The journey moves from the self-willed exile of the prodigal son to the grace-filled entrance into the new Jerusalem, coming down as a bride beautifully adorned for her husband (Rev. 21:2) Repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and study are the means by which this long journey is made.

Focusing on the veneration of the Cross at its midpoint, the lenten voyage itself reveals that the joy of the resurrection is achieved only through the Cross. “Through the cross joy has come into all the world,” we sing in one paschal hymn. And in the paschal troparion, we repeat again and again that Christ has trampled down death—by death! Saint Paul writes that the name of Jesus is exalted above every name because He first emptied Himself, taking on the lowly form of a servant and being obedient even to death on the Cross (Phil. 2:5-11). The road to the celebration of the resurrection is the self-emptying crucifixion of Lent. Pascha is the passover from death to life.

Yesterday I was buried with Thee, O Christ.
Today I arise with Thee in Thy resurrection.
Yesterday I was crucified with Thee:
Glorify me with Thee, O Savior, in Thy kingdom (Ode 3, Paschal Canon).

THE PROCESSION

The divine services of the night of Pascha commence near midnight of Holy Saturday. At the Ninth Ode of the Canon of Nocturn, the priest, already vested in his brightest robes, removes the Holy Shroud from the tomb and carries it to the altar table, where it remains until the leave-taking of Pascha. The faithful stand in darkness. Then, one by one, they light their candles from the candle held by the priest and form a great procession out of the church. Choir, servers, priest and people, led by the bearers of the cross, banners, icons and Gospel book, circle the church. The bells are rung incessantly and the angelic hymn of the resurrection is chanted.

The procession comes to a stop before the principal doors of the church. Before the closed doors the priest and the people sing the troparion of Pascha, “Christ is risen from the dead...”, many times. Even before entenng the church the priest and people exchange the paschal greeting: “Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!” This segment of the paschal services is extremely important. It preserves in the expenence of the Church the primitive accounts of the resurrection of Christ as recorded in the Gospels. The angel rolled away the stone from the tomb not to let a biologically revived but physically entrapped Christ walk out, but to reveal that “He is not here; for He has risen, as He said” (Matt. 28:6).

In the paschal canon we sing:

Thou didst arise, O Christ, and yet the tomb remained sealed, as at Thy birth the Virgin’s womb remained unharmed; and Thou has opened for us the gates of paradise (Ode 6).

Finally, the procession of light and song in the darkness of night, and the thunderous proclamation that, indeed, Christ is risen, fulfill the words of the Evangelist John: “The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

The doors are opened and the faithful re-enter. The church is bathed in light and adorned with flowers. It is the heavenly bride and the symbol of the empty tomb:

Bearing life and more fruitful than paradise
Brighter than any royal chamber,
Thy tomb, O Christ, is the fountain or our resurrection (Paschal Hours).

MATINS

Matins commences immediately. The risen Christ is glorified in the singing of the beautiful canon of Saint John of Damascus. The paschal greeting is repeatedly exchanged. Near the end of Matins the paschal verses are sung. They relate the entire narrative of the Lord’s resurrection. They conclude with the words calling us to actualize among each other the forgiveness freely given to all by God:

This is the day of resurrection.
Let us be illumined by the feast.
Let us embrace each other.
Let us call “brothers” even those who hate us,
And forgive all by the resurrection. . .

The sermon of Saint John Chrysostom is then read by the celebrant. The sermon was originally composed as a baptismal instruction. It is retained by the Church in the paschal services because everything about the night of Pascha recalls the Sacrament of Baptism: the language and general terminology of the liturgical texts, the specific hymns, the vestment color, the use of candles and the great procession itself. Now the sermon invites us to a great reaffirmation of our baptism: to union with Christ in the receiving of Holy Communion.

If any man is devout and loves God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. . . the table is fully laden; feast you all sumptuously. . . the calf is fatted, let no one go hungry away. . .

THE DIVINE LITURGY

The sermon announces the imminent beginning of the Divine Liturgy. The altar table is fully laden with the divine food: the Body and Blood of the risen and glorified Christ. No one is to go away hungry. The service books are very specific in saying that only he who partakes of the Body and Blood of Christ eats the true Pascha. The Divine Liturgy, therefore, normally follows immediately after paschal Matins. Foods from which the faithful have been asked to abstain during the lenten journey are blessed and eaten only after the Divine Liturgy.

THE DAY WITHOUT EVENING

Pascha is the inauguration of a new age. It reveals the mystery of the eighth day. It is our taste, in this age, of the new and unending day of the Kingdom of God. Something of this new and unending day is conveyed to us in the length of the paschal services, in the repetition of the paschal order for all the services of Bright Week, and in the special paschal features retained in the services for the forty days until Ascension. Forty days are, as it were, treated as one day. Together they comprise the symbol of the new time in which the Church lives and toward which she ever draws the faithful, from one degree of glory to another.

O Christ, great and most holy Pascha.
O Wisdom, Word and Power of God,
grant that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never-ending day of Thy kingdom
(Ninth Ode, Paschal Canon).

The V. Rev. Paul Lazor
New York, 1977

The Holy Apostle and Hieromartyr Simeon, a kinsman of the Lord, was the son of Cleopas, who was the younger brother of Saint Joseph the Betrothed. Thus, Saint Simeon is Joseph's nephew, and a cousin of the Lord. As an adult, he witnessed the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, believed in Him, and became one of the 70 Apostles. Saint Simeon proclaimed the teachings of Christ, was instructed in the truths of the holy Faith, and denounced idol worship. After the murder of the Holy Apostle James (October 23), the first Bishop of Jerusalem, Christians chose the Apostle Simeon to succeed him.

The Emperors Vespasian and Domitian had ordered that all descendants of King David be put to death. Emperor Trajan (98-117) renewed that decree, and certain heretics and some others denounced Saint Simeon as a descendant of King David, as well as a Christian.

The pagans arrested Saint Simeon, who at that time was more than one hundred and twenty years old. He astonished the judge and his attendants by enduring several days of torture, and then he was crucified in the year 107, during Trajan's reign, when Atticus was consul.

The Parisian Codices contain a Service in honor of Saint Simeon, the poem of the hymnographer Theophanēs. (Some Synaxaristes also commemorate him on September 18).

Saint Stephen, Igumen of the Caves, Bishop of Vladimir in Volhynia, pursued asceticism at the Kiev Caves monastery under the guidance of Saint Theodosius (May 3). Saint Theodosius sometimes entrusted him to exhort the brethren with edifying words.

Before the death of Saint Theodosius the monks asked him to appoint Saint Stephen as Igumen, who was the domesticus (chief arranger for the choir). “He grew up under your instruction,” they said, “and he served you. Give him to us.” So Saint Theodosius transferred the guidance of the monastery to Saint Stephen.

During his tenure as Superior, he laid the foundations of a spacious church in honor of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, begun under Saint Theodosius. The cells of the brethren were moved near the new church. At the front of the place there were several cells for monks who were entrusted with burying the dead. They served the Divine Liturgy each day, and also commemorated the dead.

In 1078 Saint Stephen was removed from office and driven from the monastery through the malice of an evil monk. He endured this meekly and without bitterness, and continued to pray for those who had turned against him.

Saint Stephen learned that master builders had come from Greece with an icon of the Theotokos, and they told him of the appearance of the Heavenly Queen at Blachernae. Because of this, Saint Stephen also built a church at Klovo in honor of the Theotokos (in memory of the Placing of Her Robe at Blachernae). The monastery was founded in thanksgiving for solicitude of the Most Holy Theotokos for the Caves monastery.

In 1091 Saint Stephen was made Bishop of Vladimir in Volhynia, and he participated in the transfer of the relics of Saint Theodosius from the cave to the monastery (August 14). He also labored to convert the inhabitants of Volhynia to Christianity.

Saint Stephen died on April 27, 1094 during the sixth hour of the night.

Saint Eulogios lived in the Thebaid, in Egypt, and his occupation was that of a quarryman (stone cutter). He was called the Xenodokhos (one who receives strangers), because during his life, his greatest concern and pleasure was to offer hospitality in his home, and to provide every assistance to the poor and to pilgrims.

Despite his heavy and laborious work, each evening, as soon as he finished his work, he would run to the marketplace, holding a lantern in the winter, and went looking for strangers, to offer them shelter and every other hospitality. He once hosted Abba Daniel (June 7) and his disciple, when they came to the city and were left without food and shelter.

Saint Eulogios lived for over a hundred years, benefiting his fellow men (Mark 9:41), and he reposed in peace during the VI century. As his name indicates, he was truly a most blessed man.

After his death in Trnovo, Bulgaria on January 14, 1235 Saint Savva was buried in the Cathedral of the Forty Martyrs. On May 6, 1237 his relics were carried in procession from Trnovo to Mileshevo Monastery in Serbia. When the casket was opened, the relics were found to be incorrupt, and produced an ineffable fragrance. In 1253, the Serbian Orthodox Church glorified the holy hierarch Savva as a Saint.

Following the Battle of Kosovo on June 25, 1389, the Serbian nation fell under the Turkish Yoke. During this period the Serbs continued to visit the tomb of Saint Savva, asking him to give them the strength to endure the oppressive persecution they suffered at the hands of the Turks. His icon was placed on their flags, and the faithful turned to the Saint for encouragement, consolation, and healing.

The Serbs revolted in 1595, led by Patriarch John Kantul and others. Sinan Pasha, the Turkish military leader in Belgrade, sent soldiers to crush the rebellion. Sultan Mohammed II ordered that the relics of Saint Savva be burnt. On Great and Holy Friday, the Turks removed the Saint's relics from Mileshevo Monastery. The next day, April 27, they climbed Savinac Hill in the Vrachar district and set fire to the holy relics.

Instead of becoming despondent, the Serbs were inspired to even greater love for Christ, for Holy Orthodoxy, and for Saint Savva. Although the Saint's relics had been destroyed, the people continued to venerate him, and to remember the burning of his relics every year.

After national independence in 1879, there was a proposal to build a memorial church in honor of Saint Savva. In 1895, the three hundredth anniversary of the burning of Saint Savva's relics, plans were made to build a church on the site where his relics were burnt. A temporary chapel was constructed the following year, but it was not possible to build a large cathedral until after World War I. In 1927, Patriarch Barnabas announced a competition for architects to submit designs for the cathedral. In 1935, architects were chosen and construction began.

During World War II, work was halted when the Communists seized power. Only in 1984 did Patriarch German receive government approval to resume construction. On June 25, 1989, Patriarch German served the first Divine Liturgy in Saint Savva's Memorial Cathedral, which towers over the city of Belgrade.

There is a famous Serbian saying: "Sinan Pasha lit the flames, Savva's body burned, but Savva's memory and his glory did not burn."