by Fr Gabriel-Allan Boyd
Christ is Risen! Truly, He is Risen! I pray that you’re experiencing a glorious Bright Week.
If you’ve been paying attention to the practices and the hymns and prayers and scriptures readings in the Orthodox Church, you can’t help but come to the discovery that Light is a major theme for us. In the creation story, even before He created the sun (which didn’t happen till the 4th day) God had already made light and separated light from darkness (Genesis 1:3-5). God led Israel through the desert for 40 years in a pillar of light (Exodus 13:21). When Moses descended from Mt Sinai with the two tablets of stone, his face radiated light as a result of his having been in the intensely brilliant presence of God (Exodus 34:29). At the birth of Jesus, the glory of the Lord shone round about the shepherds (Luke 2:9). At Jesus’ transfiguration, His face emitted so much light, that it seemed as bright as the sun (Matthew 17:2). During our prayers blessing the waters at Theophany, we pray that the Lord would enlighten us with the light of His Spirit. When we enter the Narthex of the Church, we light a candle, remembering, Christ, the light of our lives. At Great Vespers we sing, “O Gladsome Light,” in reference to Jesus being the brilliance of His Father’s glory. After receiving communion, we sing, “We have seen the true light…” In Saint John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city has no need of the sun or the moon since it’s illuminated by God’s glory (Revelation 21:23). Over and over again we remind ourselves that to be in God’s presence is to be in a place of Divine Light.
Thus, it’s important for us to come to terms with the relationship between light and darkness. The evil one—the prince of darkness—would have us believe that, darkness dominates everything as the greatest power in the universe. And, admittedly, there are a myriad of tragic circumstances we can find ourselves in when it’s tempting to fall into the illusion that darkness must be far more powerful than light. It must have felt this way for Jesus’ disciples when they saw their Lord captured and falsely accused and framed and beaten and crucified. Where did God go during all of this? Why did He just abandon everyone? Why would He allow the devil to rain down so much malicious evil on that which is so very good? Of course, we now know the Resurrectional side to that story, and we now know of our Lord’s harrowing of Hades. But when we’re in the midst of our own version of what the disciples must’ve felt—our own terrible tragedy—then it’s easy to get sucked into the belief that darkness must be more powerful than light. And when we find ourselves succumbing to such thoughts, it’s a good exercise to walk into a dark room and flip on the light switch. What happens? Pay attention for a few moments. It’s something we’ve seen so often, but it’s become so ordinary that we don’t realize just how miraculous it is. Flip the light switch on and look carefully. Did you see the darkness enter into a fierce battle with the light, so that they spent several minutes fighting with each other before the light was finally able to fill the room? No! What happened was that the darkness was instantly and completely overcome by light. The darkness didn’t even come close to overcoming the light.
At Pascha, the priest comes out from the altar with his candle singing, “Come receive the light, from the unwaning Light, and glorify Christ who has risen from the dead.” And as he light’s someone’s candle and they light another’s, and they light another’s, then eventually the entire inside of the nave is filled with that beautiful light. It’s not just a quaint tradition that gives us a nice warm fuzzy feeling every Pascha. There is timeless wisdom being given to us in this ancient tradition. It’s an object lesson…a reminder of what happens in the darkness of the world when we let our own life be lit by Him who is Light, and we in turn, as members of Christ’s body, who are filled with His light, offer that light to others around us who feel overwhelmed by the darkness in the world. Eventually, the darkness of the world can be overcome with the light of Christ. In doing so, we fulfill exactly what we were singing as the priest was lighting everyone’s candles… “glorifying Christ, who has risen from [the darkness of] the dead.” God has an odd way of dealing with darkness and it involves us dying to ourselves, entering death and darkness, and filling it with His light.
As we entered this week through the doorway of our midnight Divine Liturgy on Pascha, the Gospel we read was from John the Evangelist (1:1-17). In that Gospel John reveals that in Christ—the eternal Word and Creator—“was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Just like when we turned on that light switch, the darkness has, literally, no power to overcome the light.
We have two names for this week that follows Pascha. We call it, both, “Bright Week,” and “The 8th Day.” The phrase, “Bright Week,” refers to the light that Jesus has brought into the world, into our own lives, and it refers to our vocation—that we (as part of His Body) are supposed to be about the business of bringing His light to others around us. It’s the week where, being filled with Christ’s light, we become a part of the “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), what we were actually created to be in the first place. That’s what the term “8th Day” refers to. When God created the universe, He rested on the 7th day, the Sabbath (Saturday). But, when Jesus rose from the grave, it was on the day after the Sabbath (the day after the 7th). Therefore, Jesus rose from the grave on the 8th day, He became the first-fruits of the new creation, the one unified with God, as the joyful sign and promise of the everlasting “Bright Week” in paradise…a never-ending week of brightness. The entire Bright Week is considered to be one continuous day.
During all of Bright Week up to Christ’s Ascension, the Holy Doors on the Iconostasis are kept open…the only time of the year when this occurs. The open doors represent the opened Tomb of Christ, and signify the entry to Paradise being opened for us.
The Afterfeast of Pascha will continue all the way through until the Eve of the Ascension (40 days later), when Christ, once again, instructs His followers to make Him known to the world, “...and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:1-12). We are to be His light, enlightening the world by connecting it with Him.
God wanted Himself to be known so much that He wrapped Himself in our flesh and came to live among us to show Himself to us! God loves His creation of humanity and desires that the rest of humanity would find Him and be joined to Him for eternity. He wants that so much that He was willing to die to make it happen. We keep this 8th day of Bright Week eternal in our hearts by embracing the reality that God wants to be known; that we were made for that purpose; and that as a new creation—as someone united with Him—we are being restored to that purpose!