The Sundays of Pascha

Today, we reached the last of the Sundays of Pascha which were summoned by the Gospel reading of the feast that said: "but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God..." (John 1:12). You know the Gospels. They are all living examples of this re-birth. Those whom the Church revealed that they had received Jesus, Pascha brought them forth, as though from the womb: Thomas, the Myrrh Bearing Women, the Paralytic, the Samaritan Woman, and the Blind Man. They have all come from afar to the ministry of testimony. This is ever the message of the Church that God still chooses, for the service of His Glory, the foolish things, the weak things and the base things of the world and the things which are despised and the things which are not (1 Corinthians 1:27,28). No life exists without icons. There are people who, like the witnesses of Pascha, were set in front of us, to remain in front of us. These are not merely for one phase; they are in the Sundays of the Feast and afterwards, emulating them, renders us in an abiding Pascha!