Christian Pascha after the Hebrew Passover is an “Orthodox Urban Legend”?

By the Most Reverend Nektarios Tsilis
(Metropolitan of the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast)
April 2015

Global: Of course it’s not. Christian Pascha is to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. When the Holy Fathers of the A Ecumenical Council ordered that we have to celebrate Pascha AFTER THE FIRST FULL MOON after the spring equinox they wanted to prevent Christians from celebrating the Christian Pascha with the Hebrew Passover.

The 7th Canon of the Holy Apostles orders: If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon shall celebrate the holiday of the Passover before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deprived.

The first Canon of the Synod of Antioch orders:  “Whosoever shall presume to set aside the decree of the holy and great Synod which was assembled at Nice in the presence of the pious Emperor Constantine, beloved of God, concerning the holy and salutary feast of Easter; if they shall obstinately persist in opposing what was [then] rightly ordained, let them be excommunicated and cast out of the Church; this is said concerning the laity. But if any one of those who preside in the Church, whether he be bishop, presbyter, or deacon, shall presume, after this decree, to exercise his own private judgment to the subversion of the people and to the disturbance of the churches, by observing Easter [at the same time] with the Jews, the holy Synod decrees that he shall thenceforth be an alien from the Church, as one who not only heaps sins upon himself, but who is also the cause of destruction and subversion to many; and it deposes not only such persons themselves from their ministry, but those also who after their deposition shall presume to communicate with them. And the deposed shall be deprived even of that external honor, of which the holy Canon and God’s priesthood partake.”

Why celebrate Pascha after the Passover? Because as Saint Nikodemos the Athonite explains, the typos (foreshadow) must be preceded. The Resurrection of Christ happened after the Hebrew eucharistic meal of Passover.

All you people out there, especially in America, don’t create “Urban Legends”… Please…

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