Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much grain.
John 12: 24
“Koliva” is made for funeral and memorial services and distributed to those in attendance. Koliva is made primarily of wheat, which is symbolic of life and regeneration. Like wheat, people are buried in order to grow and have a new life.[i]
As most of my friends are recovering from a chocolate egg hangover from Easter, I am still in the midst of Holy Week in the Eastern Orthodox calendar. It has some advantages with cheap Easter candy to prolong my sugar coma but otherwise it is confusing for most of us westerners. All the secular feasts are certainly a fixture in the western world with the Easter bunny and egg hunts, but the original intention of Easter was and is the most important sacrament in the Eastern Church calendar.
The calculation of Easter was very systematic using the Julian Calendar created by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. In the early days of faith, Christians celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ at various times throughout the year. It was the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in 325 AD who came up with a uniform way of setting the date. They decreed that Easter was to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, but always after Passover.[ii]
But then of course the Roman empire split into Latin and Greek segments and then the Church schism happened in 1054. And almost finally in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII made a seemingly minor change to reduce the average length of the year from 365.25 days to 365.2425 days and thus corrected the Julian calendar's drift against the solar year. So, now most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar for government and commerce but some eastern countries in the Orthodox church community continues the Julian calendar. Now of course, finally, there is a modified Julian calendar, but the Easter Liturgy retains its distinctive date calculation.
At first, I felt left out of my friends’ celebrations but then I thought I have quite the opportunity to celebrate twice but differently. Holy Week begins with the readings on the resurrection of Lazarus which prefigures Christ’s resurrection. Lazarus’ resurrection also shows us Christ’s two natures of a human with genuine emotion who wept about Lazarus’ death and his divine nature with his immediate authority over death.
Holy Week continues with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday being a time of personal preparation. In my reading today, Wednesday, a strict fast is recommended commemorating Judas’ anger at Jesus for accepting the woman’s anointing of himself with expensive oil and Judas’ eventually selling of Jesus to the Pharisees for 30 pieces of silver. The fathers explain that Judas did not understand the greater eternal plan of God and opted for the temporal satisfaction of money. Do I get angry at God because I do not understand the overall purpose of life just like Judas? Sometimes but hopefully, I can reflect and come to understanding. Try to put the will of God before my own will at each opportunity.
Holy Week continues with Holy Thursday commemorating the “Upper Room,” Holy Friday, the mystery of Golgotha, Holy Saturday the mystery of the tomb, and finally Easter Sunday which begins at sundown on Saturday. Traditional Church days align with the Jewish day beginning at sundown thus at sundown on Holy Saturday. Also in the Eastern tradition, the “Time of Easter” is not a day but a liturgical season which begins on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Sunday) and ends on the eve of Pentecost.
So, between the different dates, different beginning of the days and something about the vernal equinox the Easter celebration can be “simply confusing.” I do mean to use both words meaning the calendar is confusing to my western tradition yet the sacrament and the union between Eastern and Western traditions is also simple. Both Holy weeks show us the passage from death to life just as baptism shows us metaphorically when we die to sin under the water then we are raised up to a new life in Christ. So, we should celebrate. Celebrate Christ is risen because it means we can rise too!
[i] https://www.greekboston.com/food/koliva-recipe/
[ii] https://greekreporter.com/2023/04/02/why-orthodox-western-easter-different-dates-greece/