I can almost smell the flowers...

In just a short time, with the setting of the sun, comes Orthodox Pascha. Tonight I will attend the Vigil and then after the Pascha Eucharist, I will sit down to enjoy a great feast with my brothers and sisters in Christ. It has been a long Lenten journey and I am yearning for the rest of God's great Sabbath. I can almost smell the flowers!

I encourage you to read Father Stephen's meditation on God's Great Sabbath. He writes, "One of the most immediately puzzling passages in Genesis is in the creation story where we are told that God 'rested on the Seventh (Sabbath) day.' It obviously cannot be taken in the literal sense that God needed rest. There is a deeper mystery. In the interpretation of the Christian Fathers and in the life of the Orthodox faith, God’s Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ, who rests on the Sabbath (Saturday) in the tomb, after His death on the Cross from which He said, 'It is finished.' But the Sabbath of God, His rest, is not a non-fruitful cessation of activity. As Adam slept and God removed from his side his rib and fashioned Eve, so too, Christ 'sleeps' in death on the Cross, and from His pierced side flows blood and water, the Eucharist and Baptism, from which God forms Christ’s bride, the Church."

Read it all here.