Sunday 5 April 2015

Will the real Easter Sunday please stand up


Did you know Easter Sunday isn't all about chocolate, shopping and sport? Unbelievable isn't it!

Easter is about religion, about Jesus. But you'd be hard pressed to notice that in the UK these days. Maybe the last Pope was right when he apparently called the UK a post religious society. And I can't even have chocolate right now due to gallstones. It's an outrage! You'll never catch me out shopping so that leaves me with the sport - and Church.

Easter or Resurrection Sunday is a festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day of his burial after his crucifixion by Romans at Calvary c. 30 AD. It is the culmination of the Passion of Christ, preceded by Lent (or Great Lent), a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance.

The week before Easter is called Holy Week, and it contains the days of the Easter Triduum, including Maundy Thursday, commemorating the Maundy and Last Supper, as well as Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus. In western Christianity, Eastertide, the Easter Season, begins on Easter Sunday and lasts seven weeks, ending with the coming of the fiftieth day, Pentecost Sunday. In Orthodoxy, the season of Pascha begins on Pascha and ends with the coming of the fortieth day, the Feast of the Ascension.


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