Bright Saturday; our Venerable Father George, Bishop of Mitylene (829-42); Passing into Eternal Life (1919) of Blessed Josaphata Hordashevska, First Superior of the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate
Bright Week. No fasting or abstention from foods.
Read
Acts 3:11-16; John 3:22-3
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
The most common name for the week after Easter is Bright Week, but it is also called Renewal Week, and that second name tells us something important about what Pascha means. There is something about what Christ has done for our salvation that is totally new – it’s never been done before – and that makes us (renews us) into the people we were made to be. Several places in the Psalms, we read the words “sing a new song to the Lord;” and it’s that new song that we sing at Pascha, in honour of the Resurrection.
In the same way, today’s gospel points to the newness of salvation in Christ. John the Baptist points to Jesus in the same way that the Old Testament, in its history of God’s people and its laws for their instruction, was foreshadowing what salvation through God’s Son would mean. John’s disciples are anxious when they hear that the crowds are following Jesus, but their master reassures them that this is God’s plan: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” It’s also significant that John’s disciples are concerned about baptism – they want to know whether John’s baptism is sufficient, or if there is another, lasting path to purity. John’s answer is unequivocal: true purity (here, one aspect of salvation is used as a synonym for the bigger reality) comes only through relationship with Christ, and through Him, with the Father. He is the one who, as both the Old and New Testaments declare, “makes all things new.”