Every year, on the blessed Great Sabbath, light overflows from the holy tomb (the tomb of the Giver of Life), and this event raises
many questions, especially when the discourse turns to the notion that the resurrection is realized at the overflow of the light. Consequently two problems arise for us: the first is the emptying of the three-day burial of its theology, and the second is the transformation of theology into a popular faith that rushes toward miracles, so that faith becomes bound to the miraculous, in addition to the growth of the idea of a tribal god (the tribe of the Romans).
In the beginning the Orthodox Church celebrates the resurrection from Great Friday, where the resurrectional matins hymns are chanted (God is the Lord and has appeared to us), and the blessings of the resurrection and the great doxology. This rejoicing in the resurrection is the expression of the fulfillment of the salvific dispensation: “It is finished.” ” For the Spirit of the Savior descended into Hades and preached to the spirits there (Acts 24:2). Before Christ, Hades was the abode of the dead, where there was darkness, and in it were those bound since the beginning. After Christ, this concept changed, and the tomb became — not an entrance to darkness — but the gate of eternal light. Is it not that when we see a door from which light bursts forth, we understand that the house is entirely lit? And likewise, when we see that light has burst forth from the Savior’s tomb, we understand that there is no longer any dominion of darkness — ” those who dwell in the land of falls have seen the light”. What we used to think was the end of life has become the beginning of a greater light. And if Hades is the prison, as the Apostle Peter expresses it, ” He went and preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 19:3), then the going forth of the light from the tomb means that darkness no longer has any existence, not even in the depths of Hades. Christ has illumined everything: ” He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth” (Eph 8:4).
Consequently, the overflow of the divine light that precedes the day of resurrection does not lead us to proclaim the bodily resurrection of Christ, but rather to proclaim the resurrection of those in Hades, and Christ’s extension of His dominion over Hades. It is as though Hades not only was filled with the light of Christ but overflowed outside itself (the light overflowed). And the Sabbath that we call the Sabbath of the dead became the Sabbath of light; it is a message to us, the living, that death was annihilated in its last stronghold.
Regarding the second problem: unfortunately, religious discourse today is of two kinds — either a discourse that fights this event, or a discourse that feeds it; and in both cases it is a distortion of the event. The first discourse sometimes does not content itself merely with not giving it importance, but denies it entirely, and this is consequently harmful, for two reasons: because the overflow takes place every Sabbath of Light despite the changing of the dates — it overflows from the Savior’s tomb before the eyes of the Jews and under their scrutiny — and the second is the nullification of what we spoke of previously.
The second discourse works to feed the popular tendency and the popular faith that is bound only to dazzling signs and miracles, and that rushes toward everything strange. And this consequently makes every supernatural matter, from a human perspective, something divine: ” This generation will be given no sign except the sign of Jonah”. And this is what transforms faith into a kind of fascination with the act of supernatural breach. Popular faith, by its nature, rushes toward acts of breach, wonders, and sorcery, and reinforces fanaticism toward the tribal god (especially with the overflow of light according to the Eastern calendar), consequently giving assurances that make the Orthodox exalt himself above the other, and the cry “God is for the Rum (the Orthodox)” is raised. So God came to belong to the Orthodox, and not the reverse; God follows our calendar, and we do not follow Him; and consequently we returned to the concept of the chosen people of God.
And the problem here is also in the growth of simple popular religion at the expense of theology and the divine revelation. What is meant by popular religion, as the blessed Father Georges Massouh explains, ” is the religion that shakes people’s feelings with sensory and strange things that touch upon sorcery and stir up buried instincts in many cases”.
And between the first and second discourses, theology is entirely lost; for the first denies and the second drowns. Neither of the two discourses offers true theological interpretations that actually spring from the womb of the resurrection.
Here is what I wish to say: we need to see the holy light through Christ, not through the Eastern calendar; to see that Christ poured out His grace upon us out of mercy, not by an Orthodox merit.
And the second matter is that the role of religious discourse is not to reinforce popular faith, nor to nullify the living event, but rather to seek the divine revelation through it, in order to raise the level of popular faith as Christ did with the disciples, and to understand the meanings of the divine revelation. And the popular tendency must not be merged with theology, lest theology be stunted and lest popular faith be turned into theology.