Let us now gaze on Christ crucified

That we may be healed from sin, let us now gaze on Christ crucified; for as Moses, says He, lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believes in Him may not perish, but have everlasting life. Just as they who looked on that serpent perished not by the serpent’s bites, so they who look in faith on Christ’s death are healed from the bites of sins. But those were healed from death to temporal life; while here He says, that they may have everlasting life. Now there is this difference between the figurative image and the real thing: the figure procured temporal life; the reality, of which that was the figure, procures eternal life.

St. Augustine of Hippo, Tractate XII.9 on the Gospel of John

The Tree of my eternal salvation

This cross is the tree of my eternal salvation, nourishing and delighting me. I take root in its roots, I am extended in its branches, I am delighted by its dews, I am fertilized by its spirit as by a delightful breeze. In my tent I am shaded by its shade, and fleeing the excessive heat I find this refuge moist with dew. Its flowers are my flowers; I am wholly delighted by its fruits and I feast unrestrainedly on its fruits, which are reserved for me always. This is my nourishment when I am hungry, my fountain when I am thirsty, my covering when I am stripped, for my leaves are no longer fig leaves but the breath of life.

This is my safeguard when I fear God, my support when I falter, my prize when I enter combat, and my trophy when I triumph. This is my narrow path, my steep way. This is the ladder of Jacob, the way of angels, at the summit of which the Lord is truly established.

This is my tree, wide as the firmament, which extends from earth to the heavens, with its immortal trunk established between heaven and earth; it is the pillar of the universe, the support of the whole world, the joint of the world holding together the variety of human nature and riveted by the invisible bolts of the Spirit, so that it may remain fastened to the divinity and impossible to detach. Its top touches the highest heavens, its roots are planted in the earth and in the midst its giant arms embrace the ever present breaths of air. It is wholly in all things and in all places.

Pseudo-Hippolytus, Paschal Homily

A Holy Trunk

The Devil speaks:
Now then, Hades, mourn
    and I join in unison with you in wailing.
Let us lament as we see
    the tree which we planted
Changed into a holy trunk.
Robbers, murderers, tax gatherers, harlots,
Rest beneath it, and make nests
In its branches
    in order that they might gather
The fruit of sweetness
    from the supposedly sterile wood.
For they cling to the cross as the tree of life.

St. Romanos the Melodist

A child at the Easter Vigil

When I was a child, the Easter Vigil was a profound event for me. I didn’t know what was going on, but I did know they were doing everything I liked. They were playing with fire. They were playing with water. They were singing things I didn’t understand. He was blowing on the water! He was splashing the water on people! The air was full of smoke. It was dark and it was scary. It was everything that I loved.

Tom Shepard in Children, Liturgy, and Music

Three Days

For three days Esther fasted and Judith kept vigil, the exiles came home to Jerusalem and the Hebrews marched to the waters of Marah. For three days darkness afflicted the Egyptians, Hezekiah lay mortally ill, Jonah was entombed in the belly of a fish, and Paul waited in blindness.

On the third day Abraham offered up his firstborn son, God came down in fire and wind upon Sinai, the boy Jesus was found in “his Father’s house,” and the man Jesus “performed the first of his signs at Cana of Galilee.” Echoing the words of Hosea, Jesus announced the three-day passover of his death, rest, and resurrection.

The Paschal Triduum, the “Three Days of Passover” are for us days of death, rest, and resurrection. We march to the waters of baptism. We keep watch for light and for liberation. For three days we climb Mount Moriah, Mount Sinai, Mount Golgotha. Those who were lost are found, and those who were exiled come home.

Peter Mazar – Keeping Lent, Triduum, and Eastertime

We expect the Resurrection

We expect the Resurrection. We know that Christ’s death is no longer the hopeless, the ultimate end of everything. Baptized into His death, we partake already of His life that came out of the grave. We receive His Body and Blood which are the food of immortality. We have in ourselves the token, the anticipation of the eternal life. All our Christian existence is measured by these acts of communion to the life of the “new eon” of the Kingdom, and yet we are here, and death is our inescapable share.

But this life between the Resurrection of Christ and the day of the common resurrection, is it not precisely the life in the Great Saturday? Is not expectation the basic and essential category of Christian experience? We wait in love, hope and faith. And this waiting for “the resurrection and the life of the world to come,” this life which is “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:34), this growth of expectation in love, in certitude; all this is our own “Great Saturday.”

Little by little everything in this world becomes transparent to the light that comes from there, the “image of this world” passes by and this indestructible life with Christ becomes our supreme and ultimate value.

Every year, on Great Saturday…we wait for the Easter night and the fullness of Paschal joy. We know that they are approaching — and yet, how slow is this approach, how long is this day! But is not the wonderful quiet of Great Saturday the symbol of our very life in this world? Are we not always in this “middle day,” waiting for the Pascha of Christ, preparing ourselves for the day without evening of His Kingdom?

Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent

We keep vigil on this night

Dearest brothers and sisters, we keep vigil on this night, on which we recall that our Lord was buried. We ought to keep vigil during that time in which, for our sakes, he slept. Long before, he announced his passion through his prophet: “I slept,” he says, “and I rose up, because the Lord received me” (Psalm 3:5). He called the Father “Lord.” Hence on the night on which he slept, we keep vigil, so that through the death he suffered we might have life. During his short sleep we celebrate a vigil, so that he will keep watch for us and, when we are raised, we can abide untired for the eternal vigil. On the night he also rose; our hope keeps watch for his resurrection.

St. Augustine, Sermon 223B

The Symbols and Foreshadowings of the Cross

Throughout history the most wonderful events have been only the symbols and foreshadowings of this cross. Consider them, if you are anxious to learn. Did not God decree that Noah should escape from drowning in the flood with his sons and their wives and every kind of animal in a tiny wooden boat?

And what of Moses’ staff? Was it not a symbol of the cross? Now it changed water into blood; now it devoured the false snakes of the magicians; now by the power of its touch it divided the sea; now it made the waves of the sea flow back together, drowning the enemy and saving God’s true children.

Aaron’s rod was another symbol of the cross. On a single day it blossomed and showed him to be the true priest.

Abraham too foreshadowed it, when he bound his son Isaac and placed him on a pile of wood. By the cross death was killed and Adam restored to life. In the cross every apostle has gloried; by it every martyr has been crowned and every saint made holy. We have put on the cross of Christ, and laid aside the old. Through the cross we have joined Christ’s flock, and are granted a place in the sheepfold of heaven.

St. Theodore the Studite

Alas, dear Christ, the snake is here again

Alas, dear Christ, the snake is here again.
Alas, he is here: terror has seized me, and fear.
Alas that I ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Alas that his envy led me to envy too.
I did not become like God; I was cast out of paradise.
Temper, sword, awhile, the heat of your flames
and let me go again about the garden,
entering with Christ, a thief from another tree.

St. Gregory Nazianzen, Poemata de seipso

You are incontestably alive

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a mortal and made it the source of life for every mortal. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of all those raised from the dead.

St. Ephrem the Syrian, Sermo de Domino Nostro 4.9