SPECIAL FEATURE: PESSAH AND EASTER
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PESSAH IN THE JEWISH TRADITION
We must take into particular consideration this earthly and agricultural concern and care for the Holy Land. Wherever a Jew lives, his prayers are uttered to God for the sake and the welfare, the development of the Land of Israel. Christian faithful don�t have to have such a tight link to the Holy Land because Christ is Risen from the Dead and His Reign is covering the entire planet. On the other hand, it should be noted that many pilgrim traditions do take this element into account, especially the Slavic and East-European faithful who show their connection and spiritual link during the prayers to the agricultural realm of the Land of Jesus. The prayer �For seasonable weather, abudance of the fruits of the earth and peaceful times� in the Byzantine tradition corresponds exactly to the 18 Blessings of the Synagogue.
At the time of Jesus, different sects used various calendars for the celebration of the Feasts. The Saduccean priests [who did not accepted the Pharisean confession of the Resurrection of the dead common to the Jews and the Christians] used an older calendar also adopted by the strict sect of the Essenes who had taken refuge in the wilderness, near Qumran. In this region were found in 1947 the famous Dead Sea Scrolls describing the rules of this �paramonastic� community of Jews of very strict observance. They were proclaiming the reign of a Malki-Tzedek, a King of Righteousness, which is very close to the Gospel preached by John the Baptist, and, to some extent, Jesus Christ.
The Saduccean Priests served in the Temple of Jerusalem and had a special calendar. Father Bargil Pixner who died just before Easter last year and was a famous Jerusalemite Benedictine scholar, showed that the strict pious Essenes were living at Holy Zion and therefore could attend daily all the services of the Temple. In the Gospel, it appears that, after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, a lot of priests joined the first Judaeo-Christian Community composed of Jews who believed in Jesus Christ as stated in the Act of the Apostles 6:7 : �A great company of the priest were obedient to the Faith�. We know, by archeological research that James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem of Jesus� parentage was heading the local community. His role was rather difficult in order to find a balance between the Believers in Jesus Christ who were of Jewish [Ecclesia ex Circumcisione] or Gentile [Ecclesia ex Gentibus] origin. He had to maintain a connection with the Temple hierarchs who were Saduccean, since the first Christians were daily attending the Service of the Temple. We can hardly imagine that today because we have undergone tremendous cultural changes and a process of estrangement between Jews and Christians. �A great numbers of souls were adding to the community of the believers and they, continuing daily with one accord in the Temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart� [Acts of the Apostles 2:46]. This shows that Gentiles were with Jews since they could only share meat and offer graces together outside the Temple.
This was then a special time for Pessah and Easter. In the Temple, the specific calendar used by the Sadducees had accepted the rule that Pessah, i.e. the 14th day of the Month Nisan at night would always fall on a Wednesday [Yom 4 or �revii�], which allowed to celebrate Shavuot, the Gift of the Torah 49 days later, always on a Wednesday. As shown by all the Gospels, Jesus celebrates the Pessah on this day. Either He anticipated the date or He was complying with the members of His family and the people who were following the Temple schedule for the Paschal Sacrifices.
The second calendar, especially used by the Pharisees, is the one mentioned in the Gospel, when the women came and it was a Friday Night, i.e. the beginning of a Shabbat that year [Matthew 27:62, Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54, John 19:31-42]. Since the Church adopted the common Pharisean calendar, Fr. Bargil Pixner showed that, most probably, Jesus was respecting the Temple custom in force and therefore appears to His disciples 8 days later, i.e. at the end of the Feast of the Pharisean Passover.
B] Easter
The Paskhalia in Greek and Slavonic is a science which consists to determine a long time in advance the date of the Feast of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, i.e. the day of Easter in accordance with the rules defined at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. It should be noted that this date was common to all Christians until the Great Schisma happened in 1054 between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church. It should also be clear that different habits had been adopted in the course of the first centuries following the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which led to local specific decisions. The rule is �that the Feast of Easter � Paskha must be celebrated after the full Moon following the Spring equinox�. Therefore, the Feast can earliest be celebrated on March 22nd and to the latest on April 25th. All computations of the Easter date were made with consideration to the Julian calendar,
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