Post by hume on Feb 10, 2007 10:19:43 GMT -8
4/9/06:
Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote that "feast days" like Passover (and, later, Easter) express "the Christian experience of time."
Someone once said "life is just one damned thing after another." Pardon the "curse word," but try reading this literally -- it's a nice description of the fallen world, isn't it? In fact this is a biblical teaching, expressed nowhere more clearly or forcefully than in the book of Ecclesiastes:
"What does main gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever ...
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say ...
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again,
there is nothing new under the sun."
-- Ecc 1:3-9
"So I hated life ... All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind."
-- Ecc 2:17
This realization is the source, the beginning point, of the whole idea (Christian and pre-Christian) of feasts and festivals. Schmemann explains that Christian feasts like Easter are not mere commemorations, reminders of past events; they transform, they reinterpret time. "Feast means joy ... To understand the true nature -- and function -- of feasts we must remember that Christianity was born and preached at first in cultures in which feasts and celebrations were an organic and essential part of the whole world view and way of life. For the man of the past a feast was not something accidental and 'additional': it was his way of putting meaning into his life, of liberating it from the animal rhythm of work and rest. A feast was not a simple 'break' in the otherwise meaningless and hard life of work, but a justification of that work, its fruit ... A feast was thus always deeply and organically related to time, to the whole framework of man's life in the world." Christianity "accepted and made its own this fundamentally human phenomenon of feast, as it accepted and made its own the whole man and all his needs. But, as in everything else, Christians accepted the feast not only by giving it a new meaning, ... but by taking it, along with the whole of 'natural' man, through death and resurrection."
"Christianity was the revelation and the gift of joy, and thus, the gift of genuine feast ... 'through the Cross, joy came into the whole world.' This joy is pure joy because it does not depend on anything in this world, and is not the reward of anything in us. It is totally and absolutely a gift ... and being pure gift, this joy has a transforming power, the only really transforming power in this world."
"And thus Easter is not a commemoration of an event, but -- every year -- the fulfillment of time itself, of our real time ... Time always points to a feast, to a joy, which by itself it cannot give or realize ... But on Easter night the meaning [of time] is given."
(from Schmemann's book, _For the Life of the World_)
Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote that "feast days" like Passover (and, later, Easter) express "the Christian experience of time."
Someone once said "life is just one damned thing after another." Pardon the "curse word," but try reading this literally -- it's a nice description of the fallen world, isn't it? In fact this is a biblical teaching, expressed nowhere more clearly or forcefully than in the book of Ecclesiastes:
"What does main gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever ...
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say ...
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again,
there is nothing new under the sun."
-- Ecc 1:3-9
"So I hated life ... All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind."
-- Ecc 2:17
This realization is the source, the beginning point, of the whole idea (Christian and pre-Christian) of feasts and festivals. Schmemann explains that Christian feasts like Easter are not mere commemorations, reminders of past events; they transform, they reinterpret time. "Feast means joy ... To understand the true nature -- and function -- of feasts we must remember that Christianity was born and preached at first in cultures in which feasts and celebrations were an organic and essential part of the whole world view and way of life. For the man of the past a feast was not something accidental and 'additional': it was his way of putting meaning into his life, of liberating it from the animal rhythm of work and rest. A feast was not a simple 'break' in the otherwise meaningless and hard life of work, but a justification of that work, its fruit ... A feast was thus always deeply and organically related to time, to the whole framework of man's life in the world." Christianity "accepted and made its own this fundamentally human phenomenon of feast, as it accepted and made its own the whole man and all his needs. But, as in everything else, Christians accepted the feast not only by giving it a new meaning, ... but by taking it, along with the whole of 'natural' man, through death and resurrection."
"Christianity was the revelation and the gift of joy, and thus, the gift of genuine feast ... 'through the Cross, joy came into the whole world.' This joy is pure joy because it does not depend on anything in this world, and is not the reward of anything in us. It is totally and absolutely a gift ... and being pure gift, this joy has a transforming power, the only really transforming power in this world."
"And thus Easter is not a commemoration of an event, but -- every year -- the fulfillment of time itself, of our real time ... Time always points to a feast, to a joy, which by itself it cannot give or realize ... But on Easter night the meaning [of time] is given."
(from Schmemann's book, _For the Life of the World_)