Orthodox Easter.

Today, 12 April 2026, is Easter in the Orthodox Church.

Which is admittedly weird. Orthodox churches have the very same rule for figuring out the date of Easter as the rest of Christendom: It’s the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. Therefore the Orthodox celebrations of Easter should fall on exactly the same day as Catholic and Protestant and nondenominational churches. Same as they do every other year.

Here’s why they don’t: Orthodox custom insists Easter has to take place after Passover. It can’t do it before; it can’t do it during. Last week’s Easter observance was in the middle of the Passover festival.

Now, when Easter falls before Passover—like it did in 2024, when it was nearly a whole month before Easter—I’d say the Orthodox have a valid point. If Easter is the Christian Passover, shouldn’t they happen at the same time, or at least very near the same time?

Most of the reason they don’t, has to do with ancient Christians intentionally trying to disconnect the two holidays. Some of those Christians were most definitely antisemitic. (How you can be antisemitic when our Lord is a Jew still makes no sense to me, but since when have antisemites made sense?) That’s why they chose our formula for determining Easter, instead of scheduling it right after Passover. That way they wouldn’t be dependent on the Hebrew calendar.

But… why be independent of the Hebrew calendar? After all, we’re not independent of the Hebrew scriptures: We still read and revere the Old Testament. We’re not independent of the Law and Prophets; they point us to God’s will for our lives. The Hebrews’ Messiah is our Messiah. You can’t divorce Jesus and Christianity from their historical background without getting weird… and, most of the time, dangerously heretic.

Ordinarily I’d agree with the Orthodox, but this year I think they’re being too particular. Jesus died 14 Nisan, the day before Passover, and rose 16 Nisan, the second day of the festival. Easter happened during Passover. No reason it can’t still happen during Passover, like it did last week. (Following the usual formula, sometimes this happens.) But there shouldn’t be any disconnect at all between Passover and Easter. Jesus is the world’s Passover lamb.

(As for all the other Christians who celebrated Easter last week: You realize it’s still Easter until Pentecost, right? Oh, you forgot. Well, no problem. Here’s your reminder.)

Happy Easter, folks.

Sanctus.

The name Sanctus comes from the first word of the Latin translation of this prayer. The first three lines come from Isaiah 6.3, where the seraphs are shouting in praise of the LORD; the last three come from Matthew 21.9, where the people shout in praise as Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey.

Holy holy holy Lord

God of power and might

Heaven and earth are full of your glory

Hosanna in the highest

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord

Hosanna in the highest

The form comes from St. John Chrysostom. Earlier English translations, as found in the Book of Common Prayer, have for the second line, “God of Sabaoth.” The Roman Missal has “God of hosts.” These are all translations of the Hebrew יְהוָ֨ה צְבָא֜וֹת/YHWH Chavaót, “LORD of vast numbers” (KJV “LORD of hosts”). Christians have variously translated chavaót as hosts, armies, “power and might,” troops, “angel armies” if you’re gonna make assumptions about what his armies consist of (and why can’t God mobilize his billions of human followers?), or “Sabaoth” Ro 9.29 if, like Paul, you don’t care to translate it. Me, I tend to go with “LORD of War,” because whenever YHWH Chavaót appears in the bible, the author usually expects God to kick some ass.

Most people nowadays assume hosanna (Syriac ܐܽܘܫܰܥܢܳܐ/wošánna) either means “rejoice,” or is a word used to rejoice. It’s not. It means “Oh, save [us].” Saying “Hosanna in the highest” properly means, “By the Most High”—either in his power or his name—“save us.” There’s some expectation Jesus has come to save—which is true, though they might’ve been expecting Jesus to save them from the Romans, not so much from sin and death. But yeah, this isn’t a praise word like people imagine. It’s a prayer request.

Musical bonus: A song by a friend of mine, James Thomas La Brie. Big instrumental first part; and of course his version of the Sanctus in the “Hosanna in the Highest” part. YouTube

Many of these ancient prayers have of course been set to music. That’s the way most Protestants know of them: When I first wrote about the Sanctus years ago, one of the more common responses I got was, “I thought this was a worship song.” Well it is. But first it was a rote prayer. Musicians rediscover rote prayers all the time, and set ’em to music. If they don’t rhyme, chances are they began their existence as a prayer.

And like many a rote prayer, we can use this prayer to help us meditate. You wanna get your mind off the things around you, and concentrate on God? You tap those rote prayers. Repeat them to yourself, focus on the words, focus on the Lord, and praise him.

Jesus’s resurrection, in 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘬.

Mark 16.1-9.

The following is everything Mark has to say about Jesus’s resurrection.

Seriously, everything. If it seems short to you, that’s because your average bible includes the Long Ending, which—though wholly accurate—wasn’t written by Mark. It was written later by Christians who felt the Gospel of Mark ended much too abruptly; that it’s not enough to just say Jesus is risen and alive, you gotta talk about what he did after he arose.

Anyway let’s just look at the scriptures:

Mark 16.1-9 KWL

1Sabbath having passed,

Mary the Magdalene,

Mary mother of James bar Alphæus,

and Salomë

buy fragrances so they can anoint Jesus.

2Very early on the first day of the week,

at sunrise,

the women go to the sepulcher.

3The women are saying to themselves,

“Who will roll away for us

the stone at the sepulcher door?”

4Looking, they see the stone was rolled away,

for it’s very big.

5Entering the sepulcher,

they see a “young man” sitting at the right,

clothed in a white robe.

They’re alarmed.

6The “young man” tells them, “Don’t be alarmed.

You seek the crucified Jesus the Nazarene.

He is risen! He’s not here.

Look at the place he was put.

7But go; tell Jesus’s students and Simon Peter this:

‘He goes before you to the Galilee.

You’ll see him there, like he told you.’ ”

8Coming out, the women flee the sepulcher,

for they’re shaking and ecstatic.

They say nothing to no one, for they’re afraid.

And that’s how the gospel ends: With καὶ οὐδενὶ οὐδὲν εἶπαν· ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ/ke udení udén eínan—efovúnto yár, “and nothing to no one they say, for they be afraid.” Done. The end.

Since it’s kind of a sucky ending, Christians came up with two better ones. Probably the first one they came up with was the Short Ending, which I’ll include here. The Long Ending merits another article.

Yes, I realize there are gonna be people who don’t know about either the Short Ending or Long Ending, think the Long Ending is bible, and are horrified that it might not be. Relax; it’s bible. So’s the Short Ending. Both are scripture; both were inspired by the Holy Spirit; both are canon; both are true; doesn’t matter that Mark didn’t write ’em. Now lemme just take the Short Ending out of your bible’s footnotes, and here it is:

Mark 16.9 KWL [Short Ending]

Everything the “young man” commanded about Peter

the women concisely proclaimed.

After these things, Jesus himself sent them east to west

with the holy and immortal message of salvation

in the age to come. Amen!

Easter.

On 5 April 33, before the sun rose at 5:23 a.m. in Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. Executed less than 48 hours before, he became the first human on earth to be resurrected.

Jesus died the day before Passover. This was deliberate. This way his death fulfilled many of the Passover rituals. Because of this relationship to Passover, many Christians actually call this day some variation of the Hebrew פֶּסַח/Pesákh, “Passover.” In Greek and Latin (and Russian), it’s Pascha; in Danish Påske, Dutch Pasen, French Pâques, Italian Pasqua, Spanish Pascua, Swedish Påsk.

But in many Germanic-speaking countries, including English, we use the ancient pagan word for April, Eostur. In German this becomes Ostern; in English Easter. Because of the pagan origins of this word, certain Christians avoid it and just call the day “Resurrection Sunday.” Which is fine, but confuses non-Christians who don’t realize why we’re acting like a bunch of snowflakes.

Easter is our most important holiday. Christmas tends to get the world’s focus (and certainly that of merchants), but it’s only because Christmas doesn’t stretch their beliefs too far. Everybody agrees Jesus was born; we only differ on details. But Easter is about how Jesus rose from the dead, and that’s a sticking point for a whole lot of pagans. They don’t buy it.

They don’t even like it: When they die, they wanna go to heaven and stay there. Resurrection? Coming back? In a body? No no no. And we’ll even find Christians who agree with them: They’ll claim Jesus didn’t literally return from death, but exists in some super-spiritual ghostly form which returned to heaven. And that’s where we’ll go too: Heaven. No resurrection; not necessary. Yes it’s a heretic idea, but a popular one.

So to pagans, Easter’s a myth. It’s a nice story about how we Christians think Jesus came back from the dead, but they insist it comes from ancient times, back when people believed anyone could come back from the dead if they knew the right magic spell. Really it’s just a metaphor for spring, new life, rebirth; just like eggs and baby chicks and bunnies. They’ll celebrate that. With chocolate, fancy hats, brunch, and maybe an egg hunt.

But to us Christians, Easter happened. It validates Jesus; without his resurrection we’d have no clue whether he was just one of many great moral teachers, or someone to seriously bet our lives upon. It proves he’s everything he said he is. Proved it for the first Christians, who risked (and suffered) fearful deaths for him. Proves it for today’s Christians, some of whom do likewise.

The harrowing of hell.

According to the creeds, when Jesus died he descendit ad inferos. Inferos is the plural accusative form of inferus, which properly means “places of the dead,” the afterlife. When Jesus died, he didn’t bypass the afterlife and go straight to heaven, to the Father’s throne room. He went where the dead go. He went to paradise, as he told the thief crucified next to him:

Luke 23.43 KJV

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.

But popular Christian mythology says Jesus went to the other part of the afterlife. He died, they argue, with all humanity’s sin on his soul; with every single wicked thing every human has ever done. (And have yet to do. Trillions more sins have yet to be committed before the end of the world. That’s a whole lot of human depravity!) So where does such a wicked being go? Well, if you believe in karma not grace, where do you think they go?—the bad part of the afterlife. The place Dives went in the Lazarus story. The place we call hell.

This is a long, old Christian myth. It’s been around since the fourth century. Christians ever since that time have been casually swapping out infernos, “hellfire,” for inferos—and some of ’em think it means the same thing, and some think infernos is correct. It’s why they spread the idea that on Holy Saturday, the day after Jesus died, the day his body was resting in the sepulcher, he did go to hell. Not to be tormented though; to bring salvation to the Old Testament saints who’d been there since the beginning of death.

Seems none of these saints had been to paradise; certainly not heaven. Instead they were in some form of limbo, “border”—a shadowy place wedged between heaven, where they didn’t deserve to go; and hell, where they also didn’t deserve to go. (“Deserve” is the operative word here—again, grace isn’t part of this story.) Supposedly these “fathers” of our faith—nothing about the mothers—sat around at the border of hell, waiting for Messiah to die for their sins and free them from this limbus patrum, “limbo of the fathers.” As opposed to the limbus infantum, “limbo of infants”—where unbaptized babies go ’cause they neither merit heaven nor hell—a myth the Roman Catholics formally rejected in 2007 as inconsistent with God’s grace. Really all supposed “limbos” are inconsistent with grace, and not biblical; hence mythological.

As the myth goes, after Jesus died he went straight to hell and proclaimed the gospel to these saints. As is implied in 1 Peter:

1 Peter 4.6 KJV

For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

I firmly believe “them that are dead” is a metaphor, about sinners who are as good as dead in their sins, whom God can still save. But obviously Christians have been using this as a proof text for this myth. Jesus shared the gospel with them, and if they believed and followed Jesus, he led ’em to heaven. If they rejected Jesus, hell was right there, and off they went. And that is how all the Old Testament saints are now in heaven.

“My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mark 15.33-36, Matthew 27.45-49.

Just before he died, Jesus shouted out something in a language his bystanders didn’t recognize. And a lot of present-day commentators don’t recognize it either. We know it was Psalm 22.1, but some of us say Jesus quoted it in Aramaic; some say Hebrew. Which was it?

The reason for the confusion is Mark and Matthew don’t match. Both of ’em recorded Jesus’s words as best they could—but they transliterated them into the Greek alphabet, which doesn’t correspond to Hebrew and Syriac sounds as neatly as you’d think. (And if your web browser is so old it doesn’t do Unicode, you won’t be able to read ’em either.)

VERSE	ORIGINAL	TRANSLITERATION
Ps 22.1, Hebrew	אֵלִ֣י אֵלִ֣י לָמָ֣ה עֲזַבְתָּ֑נִי	Elí Elí, lamá azavettáni?
Ps 22.1, Syriac	ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܠܡܳܢܳܐ ܫܒ݂ܰܩܬ݁ܳܢܝ	Elahí Elahí, lamaná šavaqtaní?
Mk 15.34, Greek	ἐλωΐ ἐλωΐ, λεμᾶ σαβαχθανί;	Elo’í Elo’í, lemá savahthaní? (or σαβακτανεί/savaktaneí in the Codex Sinaiticus.)
Mt 27.46, Greek	ἠλί ἠλί, λεμὰ σαβαχθανί;	Ilí ilí, lemá savahthaní?

Just based on how the gospels’ authors wrote the word for “my God,” Elí in Hebrew or Elahí in Syriac, it kinda looks like Mark was quoting a Syriac translation of the psalms, and Matthew the Hebrew original.

There are three reasons I feel Jesus is most likely to have quoted bible in Hebrew:

1. It is the language King David wrote his psalm in.
2. It’d explain why the people who heard Jesus quote it, didn’t understand him. First-century Israelis spoke Syriac; that’s what the New Testament meant by Ἑβραϊστί/Evrahistí and Ἑβραΐδι/Evra’ídi, “Hebraic.” Jn 5.2, Ac 22.2, 26.14, Rv 9.11 In the first century Hebrew was a dead language, only spoken by scribes like Jesus.
3. It’s way easier to confuse Elí with Ἡλίας/Ilías, the Greek version of אֵלִיָּה/Eliyyáhu, “Elijah,” than it is Elahí.

Regardless, in my translation the words in Jesus’s mouth are Syriac in Mark, and Hebrew in Matthew. ’Cause that’s what the authors were apparently going for.

Mark 15.33-36 KWL

33Upon the coming of the sixth hour since sunrise—noon—

darkness comes over all the land till the ninth hour.

34In the ninth hour Jesus cries out with a loud voice,

“?ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܐܰܠܳܗܝ ܠܡܳܢܳܐ ܫܒ݂ܰܩܬ݁ܳܢܝ”

which is translated,

“My God my God, for what reason have you left me behind?” Ps 22.1

35Hearing this, some bystanders said, “Look, he calls Elijah.”

36One of the runners, filling a sponge of vinegar,

putting it on a reed, gives Jesus a drink,

saying, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him.”

Matthew 27.45-49 KWL

45From the sixth hour since sunrise—noon—

darkness comes over all the land till the ninth hour.

46Around the ninth hour Jesus cries out with a loud voice,

saying, “?אִיל אִיל למֹנֹא שׁבַֽקתֹ֗ני”

that is,

“My God my God, why did you leave me behind?” Ps 22.1

47Some of the bystanders, hearing, are saying this:

“This man calls Elijah.”

48Quickly a runner, one of them, leaves them.

Taking a sponge full of vinegar,

putting it on a reed, he gives Jesus a drink.

49The others say,

“Let’s see if Elijah comes, and will save him.”

Awright, now that we have the language sorta squared away, let’s get to what was going on here.

The top two commands. [Mk 12.29-31]

Mark 12.29-31 KJV

29And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: Dt 6.4-5 this is the first commandment. 31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Lv 19.18 There is none other commandment greater than these.

 

Jesus was asked by a scribe what the greatest command is, and this is the Gospel of Mark’s version of his answer. He quotes two bible passages—and it’s not a bad idea to memorize these passages as well. The reason I suggest memorizing Jesus’s whole Mark statement is to include his endorsement: “There is none other commandment greater than these.”

(Or whatever other translation you wanna know it in. I present memory verses in King James Version because it’s the version I memorized, plus whenever I quote KJV, people immediately recognize it as “bible language.” But if your favorite is ESV or NASB or NLT—or even The PIrate Bible—go for it.)

Mark also includes the whole text from Deuteronomy. Jews memorize this passage as the שְׁמַ֖ע/šemá, “the Shema,” taken from the very first word of the verse, which means “listen” but we often translate it as “hear.”

Deuteronomy 6.4-5 KJV

4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Other gospels skip verse 4, and go right to the “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Mark includes the “Listen, Israel” part because it’s important: Before we start loving God, we gotta identify which God we mean, and that’d be YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and Moses; the Father of Jesus. He’s not a new god whom Jesus is introducing for the very first time through his teachings. Same God the first-century Israelis already knew. Same God most monotheists know, whether we call him our Higher Power, the Almighty, God, Lord, Ha-Shem, Elohim, Allah, Deus, Dios, Dieu, Theos, or whatever other language you like to get religious in. But if you’re gonna follow Jesus, you need to get to know him and follow him as Jesus teaches him, because only Jesus explains him. Jn 1.18

Then, loving neighbors:

Leviticus 19.18 KJV

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Whenever God commanded something that particularly reflects his character—something he particularly wanted the Hebrews to pay attention to, ’cause he means it—he’d cap it with “I am the LORD.” He doesn’t want his people to take petty revenge, nor hold grudges, nor hate the people of their homeland. And if you’re one of those people who insist God was only speaking about fellows of the same ethnic background, Jesus overtly taught otherwise in his Good Samaritan Story. Which, not coincidentally, follows Jesus’s top two commandments in the Gospel of Luke. Lk 10.25-29