Tombs Opened

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

The readings from the Old Testament that we have just heard on this Great and Holy Saturday guide us as an Orthodox Christian community from the death and burial of Jesus Christ to His Resurrection. As Father Eugen Pentiuc has pointed out: “From the very beginning, the Jewish Bible (the Old Testament) was the only Bible of the early Christians and its authority was entirely assumed, with special emphasis on [the] prophetic dimension of the Old Testament pointing to Christ, [the Holy] Spirit, and community” [The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 16]. It is that “prophetic dimension of the Old Testament pointing to Christ” that we remember today on this Great and Holy Saturday. 

In the first reading from the 12th chapter of the Book of Exodus, “the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron” and urged the Hebrew people to kill “a perfect sheep” and “you shall not break a bone of it,” and then “take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel in the houses whichever they eat them in… And you shall eat it with haste—it is the Lord’s Pascha,” ordered the Lord (Exodus 12.5-11). That translation—“it is the Lord’s Pascha” is the same in The Orthodox Study Bible and in the Septuagint—the Bible that had been translated earlier from Hebrew to Greek and was used by the apostles and many others throughout first-century Palestine [see https://netbible.com/ A New English Translation of the Septuagint]. The Hebrews had placed the blood of the lamb on their doorposts and lintels, so that the Lord would pass over, “sparing them from the death that came to the first-born in Egypt” [Orthodox Study Bible, “Christ Our Passover, p. 78]. 

St Augustine explains that, and I quote: “[The word] pascha is not, as some think, a Greek word, but a Hebrew one; yet most conveniently there occurs in this name a certain [agreement] between the two languages. Because in Greek [the word for] ‘to suffer’ is paschein. For this reason ‘pascha’ has been thought of as a passion, as though it has been derived from [the Greek word for] ‘suffering.’ But it its own language, that is, in Hebrew, ‘pascha’ means ‘a passing over.’ For this reason, the people of God celebrated the pascha for the first time when they ‘passed over’ the Red Sea. So now that prophetic figure has been fulfilled in truth when Christ is led as a sheep to the slaughter. By His blood, after our doorposts have been smeared [with it], we are freed from the ruin of this world as though from the captivity … in Egypt. And we [implement] a most [beneficial] passing over when we pass over from the devil to Christ and from this tottering world to His most solidly established kingdom. And therefore we pass over to God who endures…., concluded St Augustine” [Tractate on the Gospel of John 55.1, cited in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament III, p. 63]. As another Church Father, St Martin of Braga, wrote in On the Pascha: “It is not difficult to interpret the spotless lamb of Christ and His sacrifice made to free [us from] the slavery of death. For marked by the sign of His cross as by the sprinkling of [His] blood, we shall be saved from the angels of destruction…” concluded St Martin. 

In our second reading the prophet Elijah serves as a prototype (3[1] Kings 17.8-24), that is, a model of Jesus Christ. Not only is Elijah taken up to heaven in “a chariot of fire” at the end of his life (4[2] Kings11), but during his life Elijah, in the midst of great dangers, unites himself to the Father’s will. In today’s reading the prophet Elijah helps a widow. There has been no rain for several years; and the drought has led to famine throughout Israel. In the midst of many people dying of famine, two people trust the Lord—Elijah and the widow from Zarephath who is also looking after her son. At first, all goes well. Elijah asks for “a little water in a cup . . . and a morsel of bread;” and the widow brings it to him even though she admits she has “only a handful of flour” and is preparing for both herself and her son to die. In the midst of this challenging situation Elijah says to the widow, “Take courage;” and he promises her that “The bin of flour shall not be used up, and the jar of oil shall not run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.” That is exactly what happens: “The bin of flour was not used up, and the jar of oil did not run dry, according to the word the Lord spoke by Elijah.” However, then the son becomes seriously ill and dies. Both Elijah and the widow are grieving deeply, but then Elijah says to the widow, “Give me your son.” The prophet then “stretched himself out on the child three times and called on the Lord and said, ‘O Lord my God, let the soul of this child come back to him.’ So it happened, and the child cried out” and lived.

Remember that there are three occasions in the Gospels when Jesus Christ raises a specific person from the dead—Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5.22-24, 35-43), the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7.11-15) and Lazarus (John 11.1-46). Also, Peter (Acts 9.36-42) and Paul (Acts 20.9-12) raised individual dead persons, in response to the fervent requests of their friends and parents. Thus, the symbolic representation—the typology of faith and prayer overcoming death in the Old Testament is carried forward to the New Testament, especially with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

The third reading from the 60th chapter of the Book of Isaiah began : “Shine, shine, O Jerusalem, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Look, darkness and gloom shall cover the earth upon the nations; but the Lord will appear upon you, and His glory will be seen upon you,” concluded Isaiah (Isaiah 60.1-2; Septuagint translation). Isaiah was writing some 700 years before the coming of Jesus Christ, soon after the defeat of the Assyrian army by the Israelites. However, these words from the prophet are also a beautiful description of our experience of Holy Saturday in which the “darkness and gloom” of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his burial “cover the earth.” Yet we know that tomorrow we will celebrate the Resurrection. We too shall then “lift up [our] eyes round about and… shall see and be afraid and be amazed in [our] heart[s] (Isaiah 60.4-5). This reading concludes that “you shall know that I am the Lord who saves you and rescues you, the God of Israel” (Isaiah 60.16). So it is that the momentous events of Holy Week remind us of how Christ has rescued all of humanity from our sins.

On this Great and Holy Saturday, the Troparion to be sung is: “When You did descend to death, O Life Immortal, You did slay hell with the splendour of Your Godhead, And when from the depths You did raise the dead, All the Powers of Heaven cried out, O Giver of Life, Christ our God, glory to You!” Today, we too are raised up in our lives as we wait for tomorrow to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ which empowers us to follow the Lord in our own journey from earth to heaven.

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Father Emmanuel Kahn