I think Vicky wanted this! by the way, how is your job going?
Wroite me when you can,
email me at [log in to unmask]
Have you written any lovely poems lately?
I remember you used to write some beautiful ones!
Rhonda
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rhonda" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 9:14 PM
Subject: When Is Easter?
| *When Is Easter?*
| Christmas is December 25; Valentine's Day is February 14; Halloween is
| October 31 -- but when is Easter? Each year we have to look at a
| calendar to find out when Easter is, for this moveable feast can occur
| any time from March 22 to April 25. Why is this so?
|
| Church of the Holy Sepulchre: In Jesus' day, this site was
| outside Jerusalem's walls. Emperor Hadrian built a temple to
| aphrodite at this spot. In the fourth century, natives told
| Helena that Jesus' tomb had been here.
|
| <> The Emperor Constantine built the church. Archaeologists have found
| remains of a cemetary and garden below the church.The yearly celebration
| of Jesus' resurrection is the oldest feast of the Christian Church, and
| the resurrection has been the central belief of the Christian faith from
| the beginning. As Paul said, if Christ is not risen, our preaching is in
| vain and we are a people most miserable (I Corinthians 15:12-14). Of
| course, every Sunday's worship is a celebration of the risen Lord, but a
| special day for the resurrection has been part of the life of the church
| from its early days.
|
| The earliest Christians celebrated the resurrection on the fourteenth of
| Nisan (our March-April), the date of the Jewish Passover. Jewish days
| were reckoned from evening to evening, so Jesus had celebrated His Last
| Supper the evening of the Passover and was crucified the day of the
| Passover. Early Christians celebrating the Passover worshiped Jesus as
| the Paschal Lamb and Redeemer.
|
| *No Quickie Christians*
| As more and more people were added to the early church, the church began
| to organize training sessions for the new converts or catechumens before
| they were baptized. Sometimes the period of instruction would last two
| or three years. The baptism of these catechumens was often scheduled for
| Easter Sunday, with the baptismal candidates often fasting two or three
| days before. They held a vigil Saturday night and at the sun's first
| rays on Sunday eagerly proclaimed, "Christ is risen! He is risen
| indeed!" After baptism the Christians were given white robes to wear the
| following week to symbolize their new life in Christ. The practices of
| the Lenten fast before Easter and wearing new clothes on Easter Sunday
| had their beginnings in these catechumen customs.
|
| Some of the Gentile Christians began celebrating Easter in the nearest
| Sunday to the Passover, since Jesus actually arose on a Sunday. This
| especially became the case in the western part of the Roman Empire. In
| Rome itself, different congregations celebrated Easter on different days!
|
| *Setting the Date*
| During the first three centuries of the Church, when believers were
| frequently under persecution, there was little effort to establish
| uniform observances of the Christian festivals. However, when
| Constantine became emperor and Christianity was no longer illegal, it
| was possible to consider more carefully the date of Easter. One of the
| purposes of the Council of Nicea in 325 was to settle that date.
| Constantine wanted Christianity to be totally separated from Judaism and
| did not want Easter to be celebrated on the Jewish Passover. The Council
| of Nicea accordingly required the feast of the resurrection to be
| celebrated on a Sunday and never on the Jewish Passover. Easter was to
| be the Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
|
| *But Which Calendar?*
| The ruling of the Council was not immediately accepted everywhere. It
| did not sit well for those who had been celebrating the resurrection on
| the Passover to suddenly be declared heretics. Confusion was also caused
| by Rome and Alexandria having different dates for fixing the spring
| equinox, sometimes resulting in different Easter dates. Eventually,
| however, the ruling of the Council of Nicea was accepted by all the
| church, and the date of Easter was between March 22 and April 25. In the
| sixteenth century the West accepted the new Gregorian calendar while the
| Eastern and Russian churches kept the Julian calendar. Because of this,
| Easter is again celebrated on different dates.
|
| *It's the Meaning that Matters*
| In spite of the differences among the churches surrounding the
| celebration of Jesus' resurrection, there has been through the ages an
| unanimous agreement that the Resurrection is a most joyous event and the
| basis of all Christian hope. As Francis Weiser beautifully wrote, Easter
| Sunday is a dazzling diamond that radiates the splendor of Redemption
| and Resurrection into the hearts of the faithful everywhere. Its various
| facets cast the brilliance of eternity over the twilight of time, and
| enrapture the soul with the deathless pledge of a Second Spring. The
| keener are the eyes of faith, the more penetrating is the vision of
| personal immortality behind the veil of death: When Christ rose, Death
| itself died.
|
| *Where Did Lent Come From?*
| Many of the churches had various periods of fasting before Easter. Some
| had one or two days, others several weeks. At the end of the sixth
| century, Pope Gregory I established a forty day period of fasting and
| repentance, using the forty of Israel, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus in the
| wilderness as patterns to follow. It was Gregory who fixed the beginning
| of Lent as Ash Wednesday, with ashes placed on the head as a reminder
| that "dust thou art and to dust returneth."
|
| *Pretzels, Anyone?*
| Christians in the Roman empire made a special Lenten food of flour,
| salt, and water, since meat and dairy foods were forbidden during Lent.
| Because Lent was a season of penance and devotion, the dough was shaped
| into the form of two arms crossed in prayer. In Latin, "little arms" is
| bracellae. When the food was taken to Germany, it was called a brezel or
| a pretzel. The oldest known picture of a pretzel may be in a manuscript
| from the fifth century in the Vatican. Pretzels are still an item of
| Lenten food in many parts of Europe and are sometimes distributed to the
| poor in the cities.
|
| *The Sunrise Service*
| In Luke 24:1 the women went at early dawn to the tomb. In 1732 some
| young men of the Moravian community at Herrnhut, Germany went to the
| cemetery at dawn to meditate on Christ's resurrection. This became the
| first known Easter sunrise service. In 1741 the Moravians in Bethlehem,
| Pennsylvania celebrated the first Easter sunrise service in America.
|
| *What about Holy Week?*
| The observation of the week before Easter as Holy Week probably began in
| the fourth century when pilgrimages to Jerusalem began. When Egeria
| traveled to Jerusalem at the end of the fourth century, she gave a
| detailed account of the contemporary observance of Holy Week. Christians
| used liturgical drama to reenact the last scenes of Christ on earth. On
| Palm Sunday they reenacted Christ's joyous entry into Jerusalem. Maundy
| Thursday's love feast and foot washing recalled the institution of the
| Lord's Supper. The Good Friday of the crucifixion became a day of
| deepest penance and fasting. On the evening of the Great Sabbath, during
| that time when Christ lay in the grave, the Easter vigils began with
| Scripture reading, singing and prayer. Everyone poured into the church
| with light to await the glorious resurrection morning.
|
| *EASTER JOY ROOTED in the WORD*
|
| One of the most beloved of all Easter hymns is Charles Wesley's "Christ
| the Lord is Risen Today." Charles wrote this in 1739, a year after his
| conversion, for the first service in the Foundry Meeting House in
| London. The Foundry was the first Wesleyan Chapel in London and was
| actually built in a deserted foundry. As with many of the Wesley hymns,
| the words are rich with Scriptural references and allusions. Note the
| following (taken from John Lawson's /Wesley Hymns/ Francis Asbury Press,
| 1987):
|
| Christ the Lord is risen today,' (Mark 16:6, Luke 24:6)
| Sons of men and angels say! (Matthew 28:6, Luke 24:34, John 20:18)
| Raise your joys and triumphs high, (Colossians 2:15)
| Sing ye heavens, and earth reply. (Isaiah 49:13)
|
| Love's redeeming work is done, (Romans 6:9-10)
| Fought the fight, the battle won: (Luke 11:22, Colossians 2:15)
| Lo! our sun's eclipse is o'er, (Malachi 4:2, Luke 23:45)
| Lo! He sets in blood no more. (Isaiah 60:20)
|
| Vain the stone, the watch, the seal; (Matthew 27:65-66)
| Christ has burst the gates of hell! (I Peter 3:18-20, Revelation 1:18)
| Death in vain forbids his rise: (Acts 2:24)
| Christ has opened paradise! (Luke 23:43)
|
| Lives again our glorious King, (Psalms 24:7-10, Revelation 1:18)
| Where, O death, is now thy sting? (I Corinthians 15:55)
| Dying once, he all doth save, (Romans 6:10, I Corinthians 15:22)
| Where thy victory, O grave? (I Corinthians 15:55)
|
| Soar we now where Christ has led, (Colossians 3:1)
| Following our exalted Head, (Acts 2:33, Ephesians 1:22, Colossians 1:18)
| Made like him, like him we rise; (Romans 6:5)
| Ours the cross, the grave, the skies! (Romans 6:4, 6)
|
| King of glory, soul of bliss, (Psalms 27:4, I Peter 1:3, 8)
| Everlasting life is this; (John 3:16)
| Thee to know, thy power to prove, (Philippians 3:10)
| Thus to sing, and thus to love! (Isaiah 26:19)
|
| *What's in a Name?*
| The Latin word paschal for the Hebrew for Passover (pesah) became the
| Latin word for the Resurrection day in the Romance languages, such as
| Spanish and French. The eighth century historian Bede wrote that Easter,
| the English word for the holiday, came from the Anglo-Saxon goddess
| Eoster, the goddess of spring and fertility.
|
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