On Great Saturday the use of the Lenten Triodion liturgical book transitions the next important book called the Pentecostarion. It includes not only Pentecost or the Feast of the Holy Trinity in Russian, but also the other festal times in the cycle after Pascha such as: Bright Week, Antipascha/St. Thomas Sunday/New Sunday, the Sunday of The Myrrh-Bearing Women, the Sunday of the Paralytic, the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the Sunday of the Blind Man, the Ascension of Our Lord, and Pentecost. In some Germanic languages in Europe, they use a root word that derives from directional term for “the east” instead of Pascha. The Venerable Bede thought the Germanic peoples borrowed a term from a spring goddess with the same root word for “east” or “sunrise.” There isn’t much evidence besides that. A possible better interpretation is that they adopted that specific word because it fits well with the orientation that Christians maintain toward the East – our ancient homeland. English uses the word Easter and German Ostern while Danish, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages use a variant of “pascha.” Slavic languages use various forms that basically mean “the great night” and Latin languages nearly all use a form of “pascha” as well as Greek. But the Sundays listed above after Pascha outline important realities in the life after the Resurrection. We are becoming healed, we are emptying ourselves of the emptiness in this world in anticipation of the resurrection, we are uncovering our spiritual blindness with the divine light, we are adorning our preparation for our own death with myrrh and we are beginning to sing of our own passing over into the eternal springtime of the new creation.
The feast of Pascha lasts a week. In a similar way that Genesis recounts the creation and the rest of God, we rejoice in the new creation. Forty days after the paschal celebrations, the Ascension of Our Lord marks the leave-taking of Pascha, but we’re still in its cycle. The Ascension lasts eight days and it dates to around the 4th c. AD. The glory of God the Father is made manifest through the Son. We should live as if we are now never really separated from the Father just as Christ showed us in his earthly existence. Great Vespers speaks of this renewal of Adam’s nature in Christ and in relation to God the Father, “… and thou didst raise it [Adam’s nature] up above every principality and authority” (Pentecostarion, Stichera at Litiya). The Feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost together explains the Orthodox Church and how it works. Many Christians confuse how it’s possible to have a corporeal, visible Church and also invisible authority with Christ Himself as its spiritual Head. Christ was emptied and suffered, so does the Church. Christ lifted human nature above authorities, so is the Church. Christ was never really isolated from God the Father, so is the Church. Christ was filled with the Holy Spirit, and the Church too receives the guiding and authoritative truth and power of the Holy Spirit. The Church follows Christ who follows the Father in the Holy Spirit. The substance that keeps the body alive is explained. “Christ doesn’t part with mankind,” Metropolitan Hilarion teaches. The Ascension then is an image of the Second Coming; to judge people on earth is the last to be fulfilled. The end is like the beginning.
Pentecost is about new life, the promise, the hope, the beginning of Christian life, and enlightenment. The Comforter is the Holy Spirit who brings these good gifts to the Church, which was promised at the Mystical Supper that we read in holy scriptures (John 16:13). Christ “relocates our zeal” to become members of His Body. The Holy Spirit too is inseparable from the Church, and it is manifest through fruit-bearing Christians, prophecies, leaders in the hierarchy, teachers, comforters, and peacemakers. The Holy Spirit is promised to bring unity, strength, leadership, and illumination. Any other structure or foundation will fall. The Tower of Babel is the anti-Pentocost because people with seemingly good intentions, who had a desire to reach the heavens in a unified transcendent spiritual experience, built a kind of church of humanity on purely earthly ideas of the spirituality and life. The babblers believed they could acquire heavenly things only through the worldly ways, which ultimately show division. There are, then, clear signs of where the Church is. The cornerstone of the Church must be literally Christ Himself who is not ever nor will ever be separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and by extension His Bride – the Church Herself. There is another promise often quoted by other Christians groups in relation to ecclesiological arguments, “And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church.” Many interpretations abound from this scripture quote. Most probably don’t understand this as Christ the Conqueror who broke the gates of Hell already. Almost no one seems to interpret this passage as the destruction of Hell itself that was achieved, as we learned from the Lenten Triodion, Holy Week, and Pascha. Most would understand this scriptural passage in the context of how successful Christian empires or countries have fared publicly, and which Church will not suffer greatly from apostasy or heresies, or how well the bishops in the world look, act, or speak. Metropolitan Hilarion ties up this chapter by teaching that the Orthodox Church exists for all. Not only the chosen people of Israel or the chosen nations of Christians, but that all of Adam’s race will be gathered into Christ’s Risen Body. So, the prayers of the Pentecostarion require prayers “for the confined in hades” and the breaking down of “the bolts of Hell.” These prayers of the dead are necessary because we will see life clearer after death, and we still have a noetic existence. With that change, many people would probably feel regret and shame, and even though they would desire to approach God, they would feel unworthy. But our prayers on earth help those who are trapped in Hell and Hades. Metropolitan Hilarion quotes, “For the dead praise Thee not, neither do those in Hell dare to offer Thee confession” (Pentecostarion, Vespers, Kneeling Prayer 3). We can fast and pray for the human race. That’s the purpose of the Church. The next chapter discusses the apostolic foundation of this ecclesial mission and the spiritual disciplines we can take up in our fight at the gates of Hell, and how the feasts explain the connection to those realities and the Orthodox liturgical life and worship.