Believers of the Orthodox Church celebrate the biggest Christian holiday – Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and represents the essence of the Christian faith.
With his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ defeated death and gave eternal life to all people from Adam and Eve to the last man on Earth.
By suffering on the cross, when the sinless Christ takes upon himself the sins of the entire human race, and then by resurrection, when he defeats death as a consequence of sin, while at the same time promising resurrection to all people, he proves and shows that he is the Messiah and the Anointed One – the savior of all people.
Christian belief without Easter would have no meaning. Easter is the holiday of victory of life over death, good over evil.
The celebration of Easter, which was preceded by several weeks of fasting, is first started by Orthodox believers in temples, gathered in community at the Holy Liturgy, the climax of which is communion – union with God.
Then the celebration continues in the family circle, where beating colorful Easter eggs is a special joy, especially for children.
The colorful egg represents the very symbolism of Easter. The egg is a symbol of the birth of life, the chick breaks the shell and comes out, just as Christ rose from the dark grave and ascended to heaven.
Orthodox believers gather around the Easter table and say the Lord’s prayer “Our Father”, and sing the Easter, victorious troparion “Christ is risen from the dead and through death death conquers…”.
Easter is celebrated for three days, during which the Orthodox greet each other with “Christ is risen” and “The True Resurrection”.
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ has been celebrated since the beginning of Christianity. It is the main movable holiday and based on its date it is determined when other movable religious holidays will fall.
Jesus Christ – the messiah who was incarnated by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became a man – came to this earthly life in order to save the entire human race from sin with his sacrifice on the cross, and then by rising from the dead to defeat the death that arose as a result of sin.
He was crucified on the hill of Golgotha, in the place where the first man – Adam – was buried. While he was being crucified, Christ asked God to forgive his tormentors.
The Holy Gospels state that in the early Sunday morning, Christ’s tomb was illuminated by a bright light, from the strength of which the guards guarding the tomb fell, the huge stone slab – which was placed at the entrance to the tomb – moved and the Son of God was resurrected.
That morning, the peace-bearing women headed towards Christ’s tomb and saw an open and empty tomb, in which there was only a burial cloth. The angel of the Lord asked them: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead” and then the resurrected Christ appeared to them.
Christ appeared to the Mother of God and the apostles, who were mourning him in a house in Jerusalem, with the words: “Peace to all” and showed them the wounds caused during the crucifixion on the cross.
The apostle Thomas asked him about this “Is it really you, Ravi /teacher/”, to which Jesus approached him and allowed him to touch his wounds. Hence the expression “unfaithful Thomas”, which means a suspicious person.
The resurrected Christ spent another forty days in this world, when he ascended to Heaven and “sat down at the right hand of the Father.”
At the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicaea in 325 AD, the Church established that Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon, which appears after the first equinox, with the proviso that it cannot be before April 4. nor after May 8.
Today, this canonized principle of determining the date of Easter is applied by Orthodox churches, that is, churches that have remained on the orthodox, orthodox line.
Due to the importance of this holiday, every Sunday of the year is a “little Easter”.
(Srna)