It's nearly Easter

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 24 April 2008 03:04:48

Many Orthodox people call Easter "Pascha", which really annoys me, since we have a word for Easter in English, it's "Easter." Everyone knows what that means, more or less.

But anyway, it does kinda make sense, since the word Pascha comes from lamb, and Jesus represents a sacrificial lamb to take away sins. So in a sense people are calling Easter "Sacrificial lamb day". Whereas the word Easter comes from a fertility goddess Eostre or some thing like that.

So I can see it both ways. And maybe it helps people separate Western Easter for want of a better description, and Orthodox Easter which mostly occurs at a different time to everyone else in the Western world.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about.

Lent has been tough, and I think it seems that most of our church members to seem to have been down, and perhaps under spiritual attack. There seemed to be an undercurrent of annoyance with each other, and an inability to communicate. It's hard to be spiritual when you're getting annoyed at everything and everyone. And it's amazing how once you get annoyed at one little thing, you can focus on it and it grows into a big all consuming thing that fills all your head space, and no doubt moves into your heart space, where I think it is so much harder to root out then.

Even church on Sunday seemed quite difficult, and we (not the priest) did not seem to know what we were doing. Then after receiving the divine energy of God, ie communion, everything seemed to lift. Great times after that, good laughter, good talk, tiredness yes, but not overwhelming.

So there you have it Jack.

My journey to Pascha!