Easter is Over…What now?

On Bright Saturday, also called Renewal Saturday, we glance back at last week and Pascha seems so long ago. It was just last week we were preparing our lamb and leaving for Church to light our candles and celebrate the Resurrection. Now what do we do?

We don’t deny that Holy Week and Pascha is an exhausting week of intense prayer and fasting and celebration. We don’t deny that our bodies need a break. Even the Church acknowledges this with the elimination of fasting this week, and the services are shorter and joyous. Now what?

With the memory of Pascha still strong and our bodies rested, now we look ahead and ask, “What do we do now?” In today’s reading form the Book of Acts we find the people’s reaction to the first recorded miracle of the Apostles. If we want to know what is next, now we know.

In those days, while the healed lame man clung to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s, astounded. And when Peter saw it he addressed the people, “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong whom you see and know; and the faith which is through him has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.”

Acts 3.11-16

Once the Holy Apostles received the Holy Spirit and established the foundation of the Church, (Acts 1-2) immediately people were baptized and healed by God. Thousands were added to the faith, not because they witnessed the Resurrection but because they witnessed a response.

Today’s response was the faith of the man who was healed by Peter. The crowd was amazed that a lame man was healed not by Jesus but by Peter. This meant there was something special happening in the Church. People’s lives were being changed.

The Resurrection of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit fifty days later “made the fishermen wise, and through them illumined the world” (Hymn of Pentecost which we will celebrate this year on June 8^th). These ‘former’ fishermen were now healing lame men with a ‘Word’.

If you want to know what to do now that Pascha is ‘over’, the first thing is to allow the grace of God and the news of His Resurrection to change you. You no longer are the same person you were last week.

Whether you are new to the Church or have been Orthodox your entire life, you are not the same person today that you were on Holy Saturday. At least…. you shouldn’t be. If you want to know what to do next, the answer is fight every temptation to return to the person you were.

When we allow the news of the Resurrection to change us, then we allow our response to change others. That is the message of today’s reading from Acts. Changed people inspire others to change. If fishermen can become Church leaders and heal, so can we.

We may never have the ‘power’ to work miracles, and that’s ok. We may not need that power over sickness and weather. The miracle that is accomplished in our lives is our changed lives no longer dedicated to sin but to God. Peter didn’t have money. He had God and so do we.

Today is the last day of Bright Week. Services and fasting schedules will return to a more standard format after tomorrow’s Liturgy. We will still sing “Christ is Risen” every day, but we will be tempted slowly but surely to ‘go back’ to where we were. What do we do now?

Never go back. That’s what we do now. NOW we allow our lives to be changed forever. NOW we allow our changed lives to inspire others to change for the Glory of God. NOW we dedicate ourselves to spreading the Gospel of the Resurrection. NOW we watch the Church grow.