​One of my earliest recollections of Pascha as a child, attending Holy Trinity-St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church (Cincinnati, Ohio), about 65 years ago, was the Resurrection Service.  It was a memory I have relished my entire life.  Earlier in the day, my mother (of blessed memory) tried to explain the significance of the service to me and my two brothers, but we had to experience the beauty of the service to attempt to fathom it.

By Fr. John Sakellariou

As we make our journey into Holy Week, we are often grabbed emotionally by the strong hymnology of the Orthodox Church. This hymnology in its beauty and starkness serves as an engine to allow our minds and hearts to sync up and focus on the ultimate sacrifice that Christ made for us.

Did you ever catch that odd detail in the icon of the Myrrhbearing Women?  We read about it in the Gospel of Matthew (28:2): “ … for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat upon it.”