The Holy Fire at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
Holy Pascha (Easter) night
In designing this page I was thinking about which picture might most effectively sum up what Orthodoxy was all about. It didn’t take me long to decide on Pascha night. The celebration of Christ’s overturning of death by his glorious resurrection is celebrated the same way throughout the Orthodox world and has the same deep significance. Because Christ lives, we shall live also. Death has no more dominion over either Him or us. Freed from corruption and the worm that gnaws away at our very humanity through the sin of our first parents, we now have the possibility of living without sin and such a closeness to God so that we become deified. Although this is no automatic or brief process – it takes a life long struggle of repentance and obedient faith to achieve – Pascha reminds every Orthodox Christian of the glory for which not only we are being prepared but also through us the whole Cosmos.
In this section we look at the nuts and bolts of how this happens in the Church. We start with primary issues of faith and in this and the next two sections we look at how this unfolds in Church life and discipleship.