Pascha

For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come...

1 Corinthains 11:26

As we approach one of the most significant Christian holidays of the year, do we understand the true significance of this momentous event. The great sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ symbolized in the keeping of the Lord’s Supper.

Most of Christendom looks upon this event, the celebration of Easter, as a Friday, Saturday, Sunday event, but is that truly how it was originally celebrated. The issue of when to celebrate the Lord’s death actually came about due to a great controversy over the Sabbath/Sunday issue. When this strife began, it already had become widely customary among some Christians to celebrate the anniversary of Christ’s death by holding an annual ecclesiastical commemoration then called Pascha - a sort of Christian “Passover”— which the English in later times called “Easter”. This yearly observance originally was on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month of the Hebrew calendar (March/April of our calendar)—- the date on which Christ was crucified——and whatever day of the week on which it happened to fall. Christ had instituted the Lord’s Supper on that date in order that His followers might eat if afterwards “in remembrance” of Him; thus “showing the Lord’s death till he come”... (1 Corinthians 11:25,26).

The fact that both the ecclesiastical Pascha and the Jewish Passover were observed on the same date each year must have been embarrassing to Christians who celebrated the anniversary in Rome during the terrible war between the Romans and the Jews. Hatred for everything Jewish then rose to such a high pitch among the Romans that the Emperor Hadrian in his fury prohibited, under penalty of death, the observance of the Sabbath, the Passover and every other festival kept by the Jews. Since Christianity had originated in Palestine and had spread to other pats of the Roman Empire, and since the its Author was a Jew in the flesh, it was easy for hostile pagan Gentiles to regard the observance of the ecclesiastical Pascha by Gentile Christians on the date of the Jewish Passover as Judaizing. Because the observance of the ecclesiastical Pascha had not been established by law, the leaders of the church in Rome felt at liberty to modify the celebrating of the festival so that it would not coincide exactly with the time of the celebration of the Passover by Jews. Anciently, the day on which the Passover lamb was killed was followed immediately by the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15 to 21). The Passover lamb, slain and roasted on Nisan 14, was actually eaten after sunset, which was in the night (or forepart) of Nisan 15 (the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread). Hence the Hebrew Pascha. was one of eight days’ duration. The Roman church, however, introduced the following innovation 1) because Christ died on the sixth day of the weekly, the church in Rome would commemorate His death every year on the ensuing Friday rather than precisely on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month , whatever day of the week that might be. 2) In those years in which the fourteenth day of the first lunar month should fall on Friday, the Roman church would defer its celebration of the ecclesiastical Pascha until the next Friday (seven days later). This would still be within the eight-day seasonal limits of the old Passover season, yet it would enable them to avoid observing exactly the same date on which the Jews were accustomed to beginning their Paschal festivities. And 3) the church in Rome would climax its Paschal celebration of the Lord’s passion every year by holding the communion on Sunday, the day in which He rose from the grave, rather than on Friday, the day of the week on which He was slain. Thus there developed a tendency to extend the Paschal fasting of Friday over into the Sabbath in order to end the fasting by partaking of the Lord’s Supper early on Sunday morning. This resulted in making that particular Sabbath a fast day, in simulated mourning for the slain Lord whose body had lain in the tomb on that holy day while His disciples spent it in grief and sorrow. At the same time the partaking of the Lord’s Supper on that particular Sunday marked it as a yearly church festival, in joyous memory of the Lord’s resurrection.

The Roman church’s innovation became, by various means and with some modifications, almost universally adopted by Christendom. Hence, the popular churches today yearly observe a Holy Week, in which Good Friday is regarded as the anniversary of the Savior’s death, Holy Saturday as that of His resting in the tomb, and Eater Sunday as that of His resurrection.

As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper in honor of His broken body and shed blood for the salvation of all humanity, do we understand its true significance and timing and why it was changed to how and when we celebrate it today? “The very beginning of the great apostasy” says a writer of modern times, “was in seeking to supplement the authority of God by that of the church. Rome began by enjoining what God had not forbidden, and she ended by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined.