The Joyful Rays of Pascha
Christ is Risen!
During the journey home from the edifying Pascha services of 2026, the most amazing sunset appeared, casting the entire sky in a palette of heavenly colors and hues, accentuated by the presence of many different clouds of all shapes and sizes. It dawned on me that, like every other thing that happens to us in our lives each day, the good Lord sent this specific sunset on this specific day for the salvific purpose of teaching more about His life-giving Resurrection and what it means.
After the cloudy darkness of Great and Holy Friday, wherein we mourn the death of the Savior, and more precisely, the fact that our sins are why the Savior took flesh and was crucified for us lowly and evil-disposed ones, there comes a building joy and brightness, culminating in Paschal matins at the first exclamation of “Christ is Risen!”
From that very moment, and even before, we catch noetic glimpses of this spiritual radiance and joy, a joy that our innermost being clearly feels and knows to be true, even if our intellect cannot find the words to describe it. It’s as if the turbulent waters of the soul now start to calm; the agonizing fire of our sins and passions begins to cool; the sorrowful remembrance of all that would seek to mar the perfections of the Savior gives way to an increasing peace and hopeful expectation to win the Master’s favor. We don’t just verbalize this or read it with a mental understanding, but we feel it welling up within our very core and innermost being. And how could we not! For Christ has assumed and healed our whole nature, “that we might become gods by grace,” the very purpose of His glorious incarnation.
The Savior is risen! Like the setting sun through the clouds, the bright rays of Pascha and the Lord’s glorious Resurrection pierce death, sin, Hades and the devil. They pierce our own souls, too! We see and feel this within ourselves.
In the same way the disparate clouds scatter the light of the sun, our great many sins and passions obscure the uncreated glory of the Savior, which seeks to transfigure us fully and completely just as it did Him on Mt Tabor (cf. Matthew 17). The Savior, Creator and lover of mankind that He is, wants nothing more than for the light of His glory to break through and disperse the cloudiness of our passions! And indeed this must happen! In the soul that perseveres and sets its course to love God in repentant humility until its last breath, this cannot fail to obtain! In the same way the clouds cannot fully obscure the sun, “…neither the magnitude of mine offenses nor the multitude of my sins surpasseth the abundant long-suffering of my God and His exceeding love for mankind…” (St Symeon the New Theologian)
God’s exceeding love for mankind seeks to surpass and consume all of our passions, our sorrows and weaknesses, to replace them with His virtuous joy and eternal victory. May we not, like Saul of old, “kick against the goads” (cf. Acts 26:14). May we not, like the Pharoah of old, continually retract our pledge to our God and betray our Baptism through persistent and willful sins. May we not, like Judas the betrayer, walk nearly to the end with the Lord Himself and yet forfeit everything eternal for that which is temporal.
May we instead see the radiant joys of our Lord’s resurrecting in every cloudy sunset, and through the prayers of our Holy Fathers may the grace of the man-loving God pierce through and finally disperse the cloudiness of our passions and sins.