Orthodox and Catholic Easter

Two weeks from today we will celebrate both the Catholic and Orthodox Easters. Or as it is commonly referred to as Pascha (Πάσχα - Greek), Pasqua (Italian).
Easter is the feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pascha/Pasqua is a transliteration of the Hebrew “pesach”, meaning Passover.

Easter in Greece and Italy, for that matter most of Europe is a very Christian holiday, and celebrations begin the week before Easter starting during Holy week, getting its start on Palm Sunday and ending the Monday following the Easter. Although all of Holy Week is important, it is Easter Sunday when the real festivities begin, for the Catholic world, to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. For the Greek Orthodox and Orthodox in general Easter Sunday begins the night before. On Holy Saturday Night the light of faith is lit and the populous sing the “Christ has Risen” or “Christos Anesti” and culminates with the liturgy of “love” on Easter Sunday afternoon, which very few people attend since most parishioners are at that time gorging themselves, eating grilled lamb and feasting with family and friends.

Easter is celebrated in many diverse ways across Greece and Italy and reflect the regional differences which reflect peasant lore and even pagan influences.

Catholic Easter, in Italy as I remember, and still goes on today, begins with morning Mass or you wait as most people do for the Noon High Mass, “Messa Cantata” as they call it in Italy, for the Orthodox readers, this is as close as the Catholic Church comes to approximating our Liturgy. In the post Mass/Liturgy of Easter Sunday, most families gather around a feasty sit down dinner and spend much of the day feasting with extended family and friends. And what do you expect after a long solemn Lenten period which should have consists of 40 days of fasting and prayers thus allowing everyone to look forward to the traditional holiday dishes enjoyed on Easter. For the Greeks, if you can afford it, it’s a whole or maybe 2 lambs being roasted on the spit, lots of side foods like pastitsio, mousaka, spanakopita, tiropita lots of salads and plenty of wine. Except that in Greece this is done outside the cities. Athens is actually empty on Easter Sunday, as is Yannina.

These days fasting is not observed as strictly as it once was. While it used to be that during Lent we, Greek Orthodox, cut out meat, eggs, cheese, milk, butter and sweets, really all products containing animal products plus a few other, but then no one was on ‘this’ or ‘that’ diet which sometimes call for special foods. The Catholic approach is the simplest, it’s to give up something you really like for Lent and eat fish on Fridays, all other days – do what you have to do. These days, unfortunately, in the Greek Orthodox Church, they preach that you have to show that an effort is made to avoid the aforementioned forbidden products.

It is because of the forbidden products that feasting on Easter Sunday commonly involves rich foods that we were supposed to miss due to the fast.

I am sure most of you know that Easter is a moveable feast. That is that unlike Christmas which always falls on December 25, Easter floats. You may be very interested in learning how the date is chosen each year. It turns out to be quite complicated but basically, Easter Sunday is calculated in such a way as to maintain the same seasonal alignment of the year and the same relationship to the astronomical full moon that occurred at the time of the Resurrection in 30 A.D. Therefore, Easter Sunday starting from 326 A.D. has always been on a Sunday starting around the beginning of March all the way to the end of April. This same system has been used, as I said, since 325 A.D. and is still used today and it is very likely to last well into the future.