CHRISTOS ANESTI
As a girl growing up in a Greek Orthodox home, Easter was the highest time of the year. We had forty days of fasting from meat, dairy products, and (gasp! for a Greek person) olive oil. We attended one or two church services every day from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday. After communion during the Easter Sunday service we all went home to break our fast with a sumptuous lamb dinner.
Friday and Saturday services are most memorable for me. On Good Friday, Orthodox Christians commemorate the moment Jesus died on the cross. During this afternoon service, a large, richly adorned cloth bearing an image of the dead body of Christ, is taken off the cross and laid in the tomb (Epitaphio). Our Epitaphio was a five-foot-long wooden bier with an ornately carved canopy totally covered with flowers. Hymns of mourning are sung. The smell of incense fills the senses and the smoke rises as prayers to the Father.
During the Friday evening service a solemn procession with the Epitaphio is held. With bells ringing the funeral toll, priests carry the Epitaphio, followed by the congregation, all around the neighborhood surrounding the church. The clergy stop just inside the entrance to the church allowing the congregation to pass under it as they reenter the building, symbolically entering into the grave with Christ.
Saturday is spent in contemplation and anticipation—a Sabbath rest. Before midnight Saturday evening the people again gather. Songs of mourning that have been sung since Friday are sung again. Then the lights are turned off. Only a small light remains keeping vigil over Jesus’ tomb. The priest lights a candle from the vigil light and begins to sing. Everyone is holding candles and the flame passes from one person to another. Eventually every Christian holds an Easter candle as a symbol of a vivid, deep faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as Savior. The entire congregation sings over and over the hymn “Christos Anesti.” I know it in Greek, but in English the words are something like “Christ is risen from the dead. By death He trampled death, and upon those in the tombs bestows life!”
Both the hymn and the expression “Christos Anesti” remind worshipers today that all the faithful will one day be raised from death to eternal life through belief in Christ. For me this is still the core of my faith--the joy-filled promise of Easter.
