Dr Augustin Sokolovski
On the fortieth day after the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead, the Church concludes its celebration of Easter and bids farewell to the season. In Middle Eastern religiosity, which has biblical roots, there is a culture of addressing time. Thus, in the Muslim faith, with the end of Ramadan, there is a tradition of addressing the holy month and giving thanks to it, expressing sadness at its conclusion and passing. This is because Lent is a blessed time; it infuses everyday life with a sense of the sacred, and for that reason, it is a celebration.
Similar traditions exist in Christianity as well, rooted in the Bible. But due to secularization, rationalization, and other factors, they have, unfortunately, been forgotten or lost. It is a Christian’s duty to reflect on time and give thanks to time for what it has been. Rammstein also sings about this in a completely different conceptual language—musically and poetically—appealing to time in their song “Zeit”: “Time, please wait, let this moment last!”
Easter is over. The Church celebrated for forty days. There will never be another Easter like this one. There will never again be an Easter like this on earth. Like any period of time, it was not easy. It unfolded in an alternation of prayer and daily life, thereby creating the uniqueness of the believers’ fellowship. Fellowship is grace, and grace is communication.
Parish life, the vagaries of the weather, and the unique interweaving of the saints’ commemorations with the moments of the Paschal calendar have, unwittingly, contributed to the Leavetaking of Easter as one of the observances of the liturgical calendar. New Easter celebrations await every believer on this earth, but their number is limited, for all of them, like the times and years of each person—those “hairs on the head” from the Sermon on the Mount—are numbered by the Lord Christ. For some of us, Easter on earth will never be repeated.
Thus, human life is reflected in the structure of the Paschal season. We turn to time because, for people of faith, time is not merely a chronology—a hopeless march toward inevitable passing—but rather the very frame, the very context, within which the Lord Himself once appeared. Thus, time becomes one of the names of God. For He, being outside of time, became temporal. According to St. Augustine (354–430), the “inventor of time” in human thought, He Himself became time, entering into history to free us from time. The days of Easter serve as a reminder of this great liberation. They become a wondrous attempt to escape, through liturgy and prayer, into the eternity of God, where Jesus seats at the right hand of the Father.
In this sense, the celebration of Easter does not end, but continues in the Ascension of the Lord, reaching its culmination in Pentecost. For the Descent of the Holy Spirit is the proclamation of Easter to the entire universe; it is Christ’s Easter, given to each and every one, to the whole Church as the Community of Believers, and to each of us. God will never abandon humanity, neither here nor, all the more so, there in the Kingdom of Heaven, where those who have accepted Him will reign on the thrones of the Apocalypse. Christ is Risen. We thank the Lord for His Passover, for His indescribably great Easter gift.