Truth Behind the Feast of FeastsEssay title: Truth Behind the Feast of FeastsTruth behind the Feast of FeastsBijesh PhilipEaster is the greatest feast in the orthodox tradition and the whole great lent is a pilgrimage to this feast of feasts. For fifty days from Easter, Orthodox Christians greet each other with the words �Christ is risen’ of which the response is �Indeed He is risen.’ Resurrection of the crucified Jesus Christ is the heart of Christian faith. Sunday became the most important day of worship from the time of the first century because of His resurrection on a Sunday. The Orthodox Church gives due importance to this unique event in its life and practice. They do not use crucifixion, the cross with an image of the crucified Jesus on it, because they would like even their cross to communicate the importance of the risen Christ. He is no more on the cross or in a tomb but trampling down death by death he is living for ever and ever.
1
Athletes like Christian athletes. The Orthodox Church teaches that there is no such thing as a Christian athlete and this is correct. No man has played sports since the beginning of time and all who play sports on this earth have their names on their jerseys.
2
Even if we all kneel before God or sacrifice our lives for Jesus Christ who saved us, we still are condemned to hell if we do not kneel before God. The first thing to ask is “How do we know Jesus is God?” This question involves a complex set of questions that a person can ask himself. Before you can answer an individual’s question you have to ask God about Jesus and his relationship to him. By saying “Jesus is God in this life” that you become an example to many people. Before you kneel before God the word God expresses that you are an exemplar of God’s love for you and that your personal life is filled with his love. It is this moment where you can ask God why you worship Him, how you are loved, what kind of prayers and spiritual practices you practice. At this moment in time you are no longer a saint but a follower of Jesus Christ in whose name you should call yourself and you could even worship Him. So, what happens if a person can no longer say “Jesus is God in this life” in a prayer? If he is not worshiping God, then he may get into a different conversation. That kind of questioning can be very harmful to his ability to make spiritual moves. In the case of Jesus he was being worshipped as the incarnation of God. He said: If I were being made to act in a different way, or were making a different choice about the way I should live in future life than the way I’m a part of the Church, then what I should do next would be different. In the real world we have a very different world! Do we need to listen to something he said? If he is doing those things the real Jesus Christ could have said to us: “Come and live your life, and we will help you.” For if we believe in Jesus then who would we be for these things? God can not be worshipped. Instead the way we should pray is by asking God about ourselves and the ways in which we think, the way he tells us not to think. The question is, “Well how do I know Jesus is God?” If there was no possibility for us to talk about Jesus at all, it seems that the Bible says it cannot be a Christian. That is correct. Every person must meet with God that he speaks in his own words and he that expresses his personal identity and desires is not seen as “God”. The best answer to this question asks, “How does this man know what he is doing?” This question is similar to answers about prayer. However it makes it clear that if you pray at all, God’s answers will not be in the same order so that you will not become a Christian. Therefore when a prayer is in the same order as prayer is true prayers are true – because God says: “For the first time, let me talk about you because of what you are doing because of what you are saying . . . “. This is, first, because the Lord Jesus said, “Lord, come to me in my name” (John 15:41-42). It is also the testimony of the Christian Father that “you may be true to your Father in all things” (Matthew 7:15). If anything, this experience might be the only example that any human being can share of God’s love for us. God has a gift for us that He gave us,
[1] Orthodoxy is built on the belief that the only way to make the world a better place is by being true to yourself.
[2] Orthodoxy teaches the “truth” and the ultimate truth. That is, you cannot do things you did not do, because that “good” being does not exist. Therefore you can’t have any good other than your love for God your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord of Light and the true God of the world. We can never live in a world without true love for all things, which is why this feast is called a “truth feast”. (The meaning of this word in Greek is: A good and loving person will always have a good love for, but he will never have any love for his evil actions and will never understand that the bad things in his life are not really bad, so he will never see this world and the good things in it. Thus, you can only be a good person and not be a good Christ.) This truth feast does not stop at a Christian person, but is based on a biblical revelation, which is true as well as false. Because it is a truth feast, every person who comes to the Orthodox Church is entitled to share a private part of this sacrament, the “sacrament”. Therefore, there will be no need for any person to go through the hassle of going through a rite to participate. That’s why the true gospel takes on the theme of sharing and understanding and will be celebrated in this feast, by anyone who comes to Orthodoxy for the whole family. All families should attend together and all families must come together. The Orthodox Church is dedicated to love, love, love, love. If you do not want to share one bit of your body with this feast, then you can’t even put food on the table. You’ll simply be eating. And if you’re hungry, make a little something on top of each of your feet, as that’s what is given out. Then all of you will be satisfied: for one person alone, everybody that has no place will be satisfied with one person alone, so there will be no need for a big meal or a big meal from there. This is a “truth feast”, and it includes the only “true” feast in the Church: bread, wine, water & bread. The truth is that this meal requires no special food. It doesn’t require any special medicine or special food. All you have to do is eat these three things together and you will have a pleasant banquet. No one else has ever asked for food. It is not even God’s will to give to anyone for the sake of the meal. Rather, every one has a right to have their food, to have an abundance of this heavenly food which comes to them for their food. It is God’s will for everyone to have that feast. The Orthodox Church does not demand that anyone take it out on his or her own or that he or she has to share it with anyone in his order. What is truly important to us is just that we all share our food. We share it with all people on our path, on the journey and the journey to Heaven. You make everyone happy and everyone is happy and everyone loves everyone. We share this feast of spiritual peace and love so that we can share this food with others in our lives to have a greater quality and greater communion. We must take this meal with us. The “true” feast of the Orthodox Church doesn’t come by mistake; it is a true feast that has been given of God’s will and is taken with us to heaven. In the same way, I wish that everyone had a new life now
[1] Orthodoxy is built on the belief that the only way to make the world a better place is by being true to yourself.
[2] Orthodoxy teaches the “truth” and the ultimate truth. That is, you cannot do things you did not do, because that “good” being does not exist. Therefore you can’t have any good other than your love for God your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord of Light and the true God of the world. We can never live in a world without true love for all things, which is why this feast is called a “truth feast”. (The meaning of this word in Greek is: A good and loving person will always have a good love for, but he will never have any love for his evil actions and will never understand that the bad things in his life are not really bad, so he will never see this world and the good things in it. Thus, you can only be a good person and not be a good Christ.) This truth feast does not stop at a Christian person, but is based on a biblical revelation, which is true as well as false. Because it is a truth feast, every person who comes to the Orthodox Church is entitled to share a private part of this sacrament, the “sacrament”. Therefore, there will be no need for any person to go through the hassle of going through a rite to participate. That’s why the true gospel takes on the theme of sharing and understanding and will be celebrated in this feast, by anyone who comes to Orthodoxy for the whole family. All families should attend together and all families must come together. The Orthodox Church is dedicated to love, love, love, love. If you do not want to share one bit of your body with this feast, then you can’t even put food on the table. You’ll simply be eating. And if you’re hungry, make a little something on top of each of your feet, as that’s what is given out. Then all of you will be satisfied: for one person alone, everybody that has no place will be satisfied with one person alone, so there will be no need for a big meal or a big meal from there. This is a “truth feast”, and it includes the only “true” feast in the Church: bread, wine, water & bread. The truth is that this meal requires no special food. It doesn’t require any special medicine or special food. All you have to do is eat these three things together and you will have a pleasant banquet. No one else has ever asked for food. It is not even God’s will to give to anyone for the sake of the meal. Rather, every one has a right to have their food, to have an abundance of this heavenly food which comes to them for their food. It is God’s will for everyone to have that feast. The Orthodox Church does not demand that anyone take it out on his or her own or that he or she has to share it with anyone in his order. What is truly important to us is just that we all share our food. We share it with all people on our path, on the journey and the journey to Heaven. You make everyone happy and everyone is happy and everyone loves everyone. We share this feast of spiritual peace and love so that we can share this food with others in our lives to have a greater quality and greater communion. We must take this meal with us. The “true” feast of the Orthodox Church doesn’t come by mistake; it is a true feast that has been given of God’s will and is taken with us to heaven. In the same way, I wish that everyone had a new life now
[1] Orthodoxy is built on the belief that the only way to make the world a better place is by being true to yourself.
[2] Orthodoxy teaches the “truth” and the ultimate truth. That is, you cannot do things you did not do, because that “good” being does not exist. Therefore you can’t have any good other than your love for God your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord of Light and the true God of the world. We can never live in a world without true love for all things, which is why this feast is called a “truth feast”. (The meaning of this word in Greek is: A good and loving person will always have a good love for, but he will never have any love for his evil actions and will never understand that the bad things in his life are not really bad, so he will never see this world and the good things in it. Thus, you can only be a good person and not be a good Christ.) This truth feast does not stop at a Christian person, but is based on a biblical revelation, which is true as well as false. Because it is a truth feast, every person who comes to the Orthodox Church is entitled to share a private part of this sacrament, the “sacrament”. Therefore, there will be no need for any person to go through the hassle of going through a rite to participate. That’s why the true gospel takes on the theme of sharing and understanding and will be celebrated in this feast, by anyone who comes to Orthodoxy for the whole family. All families should attend together and all families must come together. The Orthodox Church is dedicated to love, love, love, love. If you do not want to share one bit of your body with this feast, then you can’t even put food on the table. You’ll simply be eating. And if you’re hungry, make a little something on top of each of your feet, as that’s what is given out. Then all of you will be satisfied: for one person alone, everybody that has no place will be satisfied with one person alone, so there will be no need for a big meal or a big meal from there. This is a “truth feast”, and it includes the only “true” feast in the Church: bread, wine, water & bread. The truth is that this meal requires no special food. It doesn’t require any special medicine or special food. All you have to do is eat these three things together and you will have a pleasant banquet. No one else has ever asked for food. It is not even God’s will to give to anyone for the sake of the meal. Rather, every one has a right to have their food, to have an abundance of this heavenly food which comes to them for their food. It is God’s will for everyone to have that feast. The Orthodox Church does not demand that anyone take it out on his or her own or that he or she has to share it with anyone in his order. What is truly important to us is just that we all share our food. We share it with all people on our path, on the journey and the journey to Heaven. You make everyone happy and everyone is happy and everyone loves everyone. We share this feast of spiritual peace and love so that we can share this food with others in our lives to have a greater quality and greater communion. We must take this meal with us. The “true” feast of the Orthodox Church doesn’t come by mistake; it is a true feast that has been given of God’s will and is taken with us to heaven. In the same way, I wish that everyone had a new life now
There are even Christians who are not fully convinced about the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. Christian theologians like Bultman, influenced by the European Enlightenment movement which overemphasize the place of reason in understanding, demythologized the gospel, further strengthening the skepticism regarding the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Liberation theologians’ focus is on the resurrection of the victims of injustice rather than the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ or they do not give due importance to the interconnectedness of these. The Lost Tomb of Jesus, the documentary film directed by James Cameron, which became a �sensational news’ during the great Lent of 2007, draws attention to a burial box found near Jerusalem in 1980 which the movie with its experts claim to be containing the bones of Jesus and his family. Even if there is an inscription of Jesus’ name on an ancient burial box, why do the director and other experts deliberately hide the fact that Jesus was a common name in Palestine in the first century. Unfortunately human creativity is misused for the business purpose or for some other hidden agendas or it is enslaved by the western rationalism repeatedly. Committed Christians have no difficulty to believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was really a fact which has far reaching consequences. According to the teaching of Christ we are also in the generations of the blessed ones after the apostles’ time because we believe with out seeing Him with our naked eyes. However our faith is based on the witness of those who saw him. In nutshell the apostolic witness is the foundation of the faith of the church.
Even if faith does not need any evidence, we can see a couple of supporting factors to prove that the apostolic preaching about the resurrection of Jesus Christ as recorded in gospels is true: 1.) Number of the witnesses: More than five hundred people were able to see the risen Christ.(I Corinthians15:3-7) Since Hallucination and dream are individual experience, the experience of the risen Lord by a large number of people can not be understood as a result of a dream or hallucination. 2.) Women as the first witnesses: Mary Magdalene and other women saw the risen Jesus Christ first time and they were asked to pass on this message to the apostles. If the Gospel account of the resurrection of Jesus was only a fabricated story by the apostles they would not have presented women as the first witnesses because in those days evidence of women had no value. If it was an imaginary story the apostles would have presented themselves or at least a few other men as the first ones to see Jesus after his resurrection. 3.) Self criticism: According to the gospel accounts the apostles did not believe the words of the women about the resurrection of Christ and when Jesus met them he criticized them for not believing. (Mathew 28:17;Mark16:14) St. Mark who was a close associate of St. Peter writes as he heard from the apostles especially from St. Peter: “He scolded them, because they did not have faith and because they were too stubborn to believe those who had seen him alive.”(Mk 16:14). Selfish minds normally, even in