Holy Pascha-- Understanding the True Meaning of Death to Understand the True Meaning of Life

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     The word “Resurrection” should be the summation of our hope and the hope of the entire human race, since in this word, we have the promise of everlasting life.  But, Our Holy Father Benedict XVI has written in his encyclical “Spe Salvi” that, more and more, the Christian hope for life everlasting no longer has any attraction for many people, because they have a false concept of the life, which Christ grants to us in His Resurrection.  In the same way, they also have a faulty concept of death, the universal disease, which afflicts the whole human race.

     We should make sure that we understand these themes, if we hope to give encouragement to others, who live in the darkness and despair of this world.  In order to understand the Resurrection, first we must understand death, because this word means more than the definition, which the world often gives to it.  When we Christians speak of death, we mean the entire state, which is otherwise called “corruption.” For us human beings, the word “corruption” is the fullness of all the evils, which we here experience.  Corruption is the mind, which no longer controls its body, and the body, which ceases to function in a normal way.  Corruption is the hatred, which divides communities and families.  In short, corruption is the disintegration of our very beings.  Corruption shows clearly in the man, who is the slave of destructive addictions.

     There is an old Tibetan fable, which speaks about a passenger coach, which was pulled by five horses and full of passengers.  The coachman fell fast asleep, and the passengers began to quarrel among themselves.  Each tried to direct the coach and its horses to the place to which he or she wanted to go, but, as they quarreled, the horses ended up wandering aimlessly.  In the end, the coachman awoke.  He rebuked the haughty passengers and seized the reins.  Then, he directed the coach to the destination of each individual passenger in an organized and peaceful manner.

     This story illustrates the human soul, which, on account of sin, is in a state of disorder.  The horses represent the five senses, but the passengers represent the different passions (disordered desires), which try to lead the soul to their own competing destinations, while the coachman sleeps.  The coachman represents the rational mind, which should always direct the soul.  On account of our sinful nature, our souls are disordered, and only our mind—the true coachman—united with Christ, is able to restore the original order and engender peace.

     Naturally, we recognize that certain bodily diseases involve the partial death of the human body before the onset of the fullness of physical death.  In the fifteenth century, the monks of the Order of St. Anthony in Alsace hired the artist Matthias Grunewald to paint the altar in the chapel of their hospital, which specialized in the treatment of leprosy and the disease, which was then called “St. Anthony’s Fire,” but which now modern medicine refers to as “ergotism.” When Grunewald painted the scene of Calvary, he depicted the flesh of Christ with the symptoms of these terrible diseases.  The Body of Christ is shown disfigured by red sores, from which copious fluids flow, even as parts of the skin peel back, to uncover the appearance of raw meat.  This depiction of Christ, afflicted by disease, is terrible in the extreme, and this presentation would be entirely intolerable with the image of the Resurrection, which shows Christ, having triumphed over His enemies, while a great light shines from His pure flesh.  Thus, the people, who prayed before this image, troubled as they were by terrible skin illnesses, acquired hope from Christ, Who took all suffering on Himself, and especially the greatest leprosy and illness—sin.  This is the meaning of that, which we sing in Matins: “You, O King and Lord, have fallen asleep in the flesh as a mortal man, but on the third day, You arose again.  You have raised Adam from his corruption and made Death powerless.” In this same poem, Christ is called “the Pascha of Incorruption,” in other words, “the sacrifice, which takes all corruption on Himself.”

     Our challenge is to live as people, who have been redeemed from corruption, so that we are no longer slaves in the passions, but servants of God, since He bore our pains and sufferings to the Cross.