Post contributed by Fr Ian Wallis, Faith & Spirituality Advisor, Orthodox Church
Easter is more properly known as ‘Pascha’ in the Orthodox Church because the early Church used languages – e.g. Aramaic, Greek, Latin – where ‘pascha’ was the accepted translation of the Hebrew word, ‘pesach’ (= ‘passover’) and the conservative nature of the Church has kept the use of this term.
‘Pascha’ survives in English usage as an adjective, as in a ‘Paschal Candle’, which in many Western churches is a special candle that is blessed at Easter, and then subsequently plays a part in the rite of baptism.
The apostolic preaching interprets the death and resurrection of Christ as a new passover for humanity: ‘For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’ (1Corinthians 5, 7,8 AV)
The date of Passover/Pesach (as computed by Jewish authorities) was also instrumental in determining the date of the Christian feast of Pascha: the churches were agreed about this although they did not all celebrate Pascha on the Sunday following Pesach.
When the rabbinic authorities (towards the end of the second century CE) established a new way of computing the date of Pesach – one that specifically disregarded the date of the spring equinox – many Christians questioned the propriety of computing the date of Pascha using a revised date of Pesach i.e. a date computed by a method that was not in use at the time of Christ.
As the Church did not have an agreed method for computing the date of Pascha, it fell to its meeting (known subsequently as the ‘First Ecumenical Council’) at Nicea in 325 CE to decide (amongst other things!) two key elements in the method, as follows:
- Pascha should be celebrated on the same Sunday by all churches;
- And the Sunday of Pascha must be the first after the full moon following the spring equinox.
In more recent centuries, the different dates for Easter/Pascha in the Church came about when the Church in the West adopted the New Style/Gregorian Calendar; and the difference arises specifically in fixing the date of the spring equinox, which is a more astronomically correct calculation underlying the Gregorian Calendar. The whole Orthodox Church keeps to the Old Style/Julian Calendar (when computing the date of Pascha) and employs – what has been referred to as – a ‘notional equinox’.
Even before the Gregorian Calendar was adopted, the Church’s forms of worship in the West had developed along different lines from those to be found in the East; and although the basic structure of the eucharist and other services is similar, the style of the ceremonial used in the Orthodox Church is markedly different from that in the Western Church.
A traditional ikon for Pascha representing Christ’s resurrection
Outside of church, Orthodox Christians celebrate Pascha in accordance with a variety of local traditions, mainly to do with those foods that should have been abstained from in the Lenten fast, such as eggs, cheese and meat. ‘Pascha’ is also the name given in Russian usage to a special form of cheesecake, which is a key element of their Paschal breakfast.
