EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA: On the
Celebration of the Pascha
Translated by Andrew Eastbourne
When we are nourished by the
rational[14] flesh
of this sacrificial Savior,[15] who
rescued the entire human race by his own blood—that is, when we are nourished
by his teachings and discourses, which announce the kingdom of heaven—then we
are rightly luxuriating with the luxury[16] that
is in accordance with God. But in addition to this, when we mark the houses of
our souls, that is, our bodies, by faith in his blood, which he gave as a
ransom in exchange for our salvation, we drive away from ourselves every kind
of treacherous demon. And when we celebrate the "Passover" festival,
we are training ourselves to pass over to divine things, just as in ancient
times they passed over out of Egypt into the desert. Indeed, in this way, we
too are setting out on a kind of path that is untraversed and left deserted by
the many, putting out of our souls the ancient "leaven" of godless
error; and we serve ourselves "bitter herbs" by means of a bitter and
painful way of life.
This
is the appointed time for the festival. To the Egyptians, the friends of
demons, it brought destruction, but to the Hebrews, who celebrate the festival
in God's honor, it brought freedom from evils. This very time was that one
which was observed at the original creation[21] of
the universe, when the earth sprouted plants, when the luminaries came into
existence, when heaven and earth were brought onto the scene, and all that is
in them. At this time, the Savior of the whole world[22] accomplished
the mystery of his own festival, and the "great luminary" brightened
the earth[23] with the rays of piety;
indeed, this time seems to embrace[24] the
birthday of the world. At this time also, the type was celebrated—the ancient
Pascha which was also called Passover. But it also bore a symbol—consisting of
the slaughter of a lamb; and also obscurely presented an image—that of
nourishment by unleavened bread; and all these things were fulfilled in the
Savior's festival. For he himself was the lamb, insofar as he was clothed with
a body; he himself was also the sun of righteousness, when the truly divine
spring and the saving equinox, the turn[25] from
worse things toward the better, took hold of human life. And god-driven
scourges are sent down even to this day on the demons of the Egyptians, whereas
peoples who dwell everywhere on earth are festively celebrating their freedom
from long wandering in godlessness. And as the deceitful spirits have ceased,
along with the storm of evils, an abundance of new fruits garlands the church
of God with various gifts of the Holy Spirit. And simply put, the whole human
race has been changed to take up our side, and all the fields, having received
the cultivation of the soul from the Logos who is the husbandman, have sprouted
the seasonable flowers of virtue. But also, now that we have been freed from
the evils of darkness, we have been deemed worthy of light, in the day of the
knowledge of God.[26]
Such are the new teachings which
in olden days were obscured through symbols, but which have now been unveiled
and brought into the light. And in particular, we rekindle the beginning of the
festival every year with periods of cycles. Before the festival, for the sake
of preparation, we take up the forty-day training period, in emulation of the
holy Moses and Elijah. And the festival itself we keep renewing, unforgetful
forever.[27] Indeed,
as we set forth on our journey toward God, we bind our loins well with the bond
of self-control; we guard the steps of our soul with caution, and, as though in
sandals, we prepare for the course of our heavenly calling; we use the staff of
the divine word with the power of prayer to ward off the enemy, and with all eagerness
we pass over to the path that leads to the heavens, hurrying from earthly
affairs to heavenly things, and from mortal life to the immortal. For in this
way, when we have accomplished the passover nobly and well, another, greater
festival will greet us. The children of the Hebrews call it by the name of
Pentecost; it bears the image of the kingdom of heaven. Indeed, Moses says,
"When you begin [to use] the sickle on the crop, you shall count for
yourself seven sevens, and you shall present new loaves from new crops to
God."[28] Now then, he was giving
indications by prophetic types: By the "crop," he was referring to
the calling of the nations; and by the "new loaves," he was referring
to the souls presented to God by Christ, the churches from the nations, in
which[29] the
greatest festival is celebrated in honor of the God who loves mankind. We have
been harvested by the spiritual sickles of the Apostles, and have been gathered
together into the churches everywhere in the world, as it were into threshing-floors;
we have been made into a body by a harmonious disposition of faith, and have
been prepared with the salt of teachings from the divine words; we have been
reborn through the water and fire of the Holy Spirit—and we are presented to
God by Christ, as nourishing, agreeable, and well-pleasing loaves.
In this way, as the prophetic
symbols spoken by Moses give way to realities, with more solemn results, we
ourselves, at all events, have learned to conduct the festival [i.e.,
Pentecost] with more lustre, as though we had already been assembled together
with Christ and were enjoying his kingdom. For this reason, at this festival we
are no longer allowed to undergo laborious toil, and we are taught to bear the
image of the rest that is hoped for in heaven. Hence, we do not bend the knee
as we pray, nor do we wear ourselves out with fasting; for those who been
deemed worthy of the resurrection effected by God[30] can
no longer fall down on the ground, nor can those who have been freed from the
passions have the same experience[31] as
those who are enslaved. Therefore, after the Pascha we celebrate Pentecost,
with seven complete sets of seven [days]—after manfully completing the previous
forty-day period of training before the Pascha with six sets of seven. For the
number six relates to action and accomplishment, and for this reason God is
said to have made the universe in six days. The labors in that [number six]
will be quite rightly succeeded by the second festival in seven sevens, when
there is a multiplication of our rest, which the number seven signifies
symbolically. The number of Pentecost [i.e., 50], however, is not complete with
these [seven sevens]; overshooting the seven sevens, it puts a seal on the
all-festive day of Christ's ascension by means of a monad,[32] the
last day after these [seven sevens].[33] Rightly
then, as we trace out in the days of the holy Pentecost a representation of the
rest that is to come, we rejoice in soul, and rest for a time in body, as
though we were already with the bridegroom himself, and unable to fast.
Also, they [i.e., the Jews],
following Moses, would sacrifice the sheep of the Pascha once in the whole
year, on the fourteenth day of the first month, at evening. We of the new
covenant, on the other hand, who celebrate our own Pascha each Lord's day,
always take our fill of the Savior's body, always partake of the blood of the
Lamb; we have always girded the loins of our souls with chastity and
self-control, we have always prepared our feet in readiness for the Gospel;[35] we
always hold the staves in our hands, and rest on the rod that came forth from
the root of Jesse;[36] we
are always being set free from Egypt, we are always going in search of the
wilderness of human life, we are always setting out on the journey toward God:
We are always celebrating the Passover. For the Gospel's word [/ Word] wants us
to do this, not once in the year, but always and every day. For this reason, we
celebrate the festival of our Pascha every week, on the day of our Savior and
Lord, carrying out the mysteries of the true Lamb, by whom we have been
ransomed. And we do not circumcise our bodies with a blade—rather, we remove
every evil of the soul by means of the sharp word [/Word]; nor do we make use
of physical unleavened bread—but only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
For grace, having freed us from our former habits that had grown old, bestowed
on us the new man, the one created in accordance with God, and the new Law, a
new circumcision, a new Pascha, and the "Jew in secret."[37] And
thus, it also left us free from the old appointed times.
But he himself, before he
suffered, ate the Pascha and celebrated the festival with his disciples, not
with the Jews. But when had celebrated the festival at evening, the chief
priests came upon him with the traitor and laid their hands on him; for they
were not eating the Pascha [that] evening, otherwise they would not have busied
themselves with him. And then, having seized him, they led him off to the house
of Caiaphas, where, after spending the night, they gathered together and
conducted the preliminary inquiry. Then, after that, they arose and led him, in
company with the crowd, to Pilate; and at that point, the Scripture says that
they did not enter the praetorium, so that they would not become defiled[44] (so
they thought) by coming in under a pagan roof, and would eat the Pascha at
evening with their purity intact—those most foul ones—who strained out a gnat
but swallowed a camel;[45] those
who had become defiled already in soul and body by their bloodthirstiness
against the Savior feared to come in under [Pilate's] roof! They, on the one
hand, on that very day of the passion, ate the Pascha that was injurious to
their own souls, and asked for the Savior's blood—not on their own behalf, but
to their own detriment; our Savior, on the other hand, not then, but the day
before, reclined at table with his disciples and conducted the festival that was
desirable to himself.
Do you see how from that time, he
[i.e., Jesus] was separating himself from them and moving away from the Jews'
bloodthirstiness, but was joining himself with his disciples, celebrating the
desirable festival together with them? So then, we too ought to eat the Pascha
with Christ, while purifying our minds from all leaven of evil and wickedness,
and taking our fill of the unleavened bread of truth and sincerity, and having
within ourselves, in our souls, the "Jew in secret"[46] and
the true circumcision, and anointing the doorposts of our minds with the blood
of the Lamb who was sacrificed for us, to ward off our destroyer. And we do
this not only at a single time of the whole year, but every week. Let our
"Preparation" be fasting,[47] the
symbol of mourning, on behalf of our former sins, and for the sake of
remembering the Savior's passion.
I assert that the Jews have gone
astray from the truth, ever since they plotted against the Truth itself and
drove away from themselves the Word of Life. And the Scriptures of the holy
Gospels present this fact clearly. For they testify that the Lord ate the
Pascha on the first day of Unleavened Bread; but they did not eat the Pascha
that was customary for them on the day on which, as Luke says, "the Pascha
had to be sacrificed,"[48] but
instead on the following day, which was the second day of Unleavened Bread and
the fifteenth day of the lunar month, on which, when our Savior was being
judged by Pilate, they did not enter the praetorium—and consequently, they did
not eat it on the first day of Unleavened Bread, on which it had to be
sacrificed, in accordance with the Law. For in that case they themselves too
would have been celebrating the Pascha along with the Savior; instead, they
were blinded by their own wickedness from that very time, concurrently with
their plot against the Savior, and they wandered from all truth. We, on the
other hand, conduct the same mysteries [as Christ did] all through the year: On
every day before the Sabbath we carry out a remembrance of the Savior's passion
through a fast that the Apostles first engaged in at the time when the
bridegroom had been taken away from them; and every Lord's day we are made
alive by the consecrated body of the same Savior, and are sealed in our souls
by his precious blood.
[3] Gk.
θαζέκ. For this transliteration of the Hebrew Pesach, cf. 2 Chron. 30.1, 5, 15,
17, 18; Jer. 38.8 (LXX). Elsewhere, Pascha (Gk. πάζτα) is typically used, as
also elsewhere in the present text. For the Biblical injunctions relating to
the celebration of the Passover, see especially Ex. 12; Lev. 23; Deut. 16.
[4] Gk.
πρόβαηον; I have translated this term freely as "lamb" elsewhere in
this text. Ex. 12.5, by contrast, allows for a young sheep or goat; Deut. 16.2,
for sheep or cattle.
[5] Gk.
εἰς ἀναηροπὴν ηοῦ ὀλοθρεσηοῦ; Ex. 12.23 speaks of the ὀλοθρεύων; for ὀλοθρεσηής,
see 1 Cor. 10.10. Euseb., Comm. on the Psalms [PG 23: 560], uses the phrase εἰς
ἀποηροπὴν ηοῦ ὀλοθρεσηοῦ—similarly also section 11 in the present text.
[6] At
this point, Euseb. is really thinking of the absolutely first
"Passover," not simply the early celebration of the festival.
[7] Gk.
ἐπλήροσ. This meaning is odd, but something like this is required for the sense
here; corruption may have obscured the original wording. Mai translates
similarly: Quamobrem illa ex Aegypto
digressio, nomen fecit apud Hebraeos festo transitus.
[8] Gk.
ηὰ διαβαηήρια, i.e., "[festival / rites] of crossing / passing over";
Philo uses this term for Passover (LSJ).
[12] Gk.
ηὸ ζῶμα ηὸ ζωρήριον, which can be translated either as "the Savior's
body" or "the saving / salvific body." The adjective appears
frequently in this text; I have normally translated it as "Savior's."
[14] Alternatively,
"spiritual"; Gk. λογικός, which is of course derived from the word
λόγος, and thus Euseb. is playing on the fact that Christ was identified as the
Logos. The phrase could almost be translated, "the Word's flesh."
[16] Both
"luxuriating" and "luxury" are based on a Greek root
(ηρύθ-) that is very similar-sounding to the one for "nourishment"
(ηρέθ-/ηρόθ-).
[17] I.e.,
when the hours of daylight are much longer than the hours of night, and thus
each of the twelve daylight hours is much longer than each of the twelve
nocturnal hours. (So Mai.)
[18] Gk.
γάρ; the odd defective logical connection here suggests that a sentence or
clause has been lost before this one.
[25] Gk.
ηροπή, which means a "turn" and so by extension the solstice or
equinox as one of the turning points of the year—I have thus had to translate
it twice to capture the proper effect, first as "equinox," second as
"turn."
[26] Mai
interprets this as meaning "the day of our knowledge of God": qua die Dei notitiam hausimus.
[28] Deut.
16.9, somewhat freely cited; the last part is not in that verse, however—cf.
Lev. 23.16-17 for the content, although there too the phraseology is somewhat
different.
[33] I.e.,
the ascension, 40 days after the resurrection, was followed up by the
experience of Pentecost (Acts 1.3; 2.1).
[37] Cf.
Rom. 2.29. The phrase, "in secret" (Gk. ἐν κρσπηῷ) is rendered by
many translations as "inwardly."
[41] I.e.,
celebrating their Pascha. That is, not only was the Pascha instituted by Christ
different in character, but it was also not on the same day as the Jewish
authorities celebrated their Pascha
