Icon found in Benaki Museum in Athens
"The last enemy to be rendered powerless is death."--1 Cor 15:26
On Great and Good Friday, the mother of our parish's founder fell asleep in the Lord, and her funeral was today. Yet a funeral during Bright Week is less a time of mourning than a triumphal celebration. It is a common saying that a Christian who falls asleep or else his funeral during Bright Week is taken immediately to Heaven, for it is during that week that all of creation is aglow, radiating the triumphal light of the Resurrection. Thus the typical hymns of sorrow are replaced with those of victory: "Christ is risen from the dead! Shine in splendor, O New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord is risen upon you!" Indeed, the entire Paschal Canon prayed on the Paschal morn is again prayed at a funeral. Death is barely acknowledged, for all know that Christ has made him powerless. He has been crushed and trampled and conquered, with his own gates pressing into his back while his captives enter into Heaven in his very sight. All this occurred at what he thought was the time of his final triumph, when God Himself had entered his grasp: yet the Christ was not subject to corruption, and the bait Death swallowed was his own undoing, as so many of the Fathers painted the image. "He sought the bait of the flesh, but was hooked by the divinity" (St. Gregory the Dialogist). Truly did St. Ephraim speak: "Death knelt before Him in Sheol, / and Life worshipped Him at His Resurrection."
