THE PASSION AND NEW LIFE

Holy Week encapsulates the pain of the Passion of Christ and, by extension, is a metaphor for the stormy seas we all go through in life before it ends in this world to resume ad aeternum in the realm where death has no place. The end is only a beginning as our Lord rises in the Resurrection, for life to begin anew, forever. One of the holiest sons of the Armenian nation and among the brightest minds of the Universal Church, St. Nerses Shnorhali (1100-1173), has captured the emotions Easter stirs in the hearts of the faithful and the meaning of life, death, and resurrection, in a hymn called “New Flower”:

A new flower shone forth today from the new tomb. The revealed light of the resurrection, glad tidings; in the darkness of the shadow of death, glad tidings. Christ is risen, glad tidings. The many colored plants of the soul have bloomed with life.