Christ is Risen!
Indeed He is Risen!
The season of
Resurrection is a season of celebration, a season of the joyous commemoration of
the Resurrection of our Lord. In this season, no prostrations (‘kumbideel’ in
Malayalam) are allowed. We will see through some examples of the early Christian
witnesses and Church fathers attesting this tradition:
1) Tertullian (~160
AD-220 AD):
For those who look
for ‘where is this in the Holy Scripture’, Tertullian provides an explanation
that certain traditions have come about in the Church because they were ‘handed
down’. He then speaks of the tradition of not kneeling/prostration on Sundays
and the period from Easter to Pentecost:
“If no passage of Scripture has prescribed it,
assuredly custom, which without doubt flowed from tradition, has confirmed it.
For how can anything come into use, if it has not first been handed down?
.....We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord's Day to be unlawful.
We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday (Sunday of
Pentecost).”
(Ref:- Chapter III,
The Chaplet, Ante Nicene Fathers- Volume III - Latin Christianity: Its Founder,
Tertullian (I. Apologetic; II. Anti-Marcion; III. Ethical) Edited by Allan
Menzies)
2) The First Ecumenical
Council of Nicea:
The below
instruction from the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea commands that
prostrations/kneeling be not allowed during the season of Resurrection (and on
Sundays as well) and that it be uniformly observed everywhere:
“Forasmuch as there
are certain persons who kneel on the Lord’s Day and in the days of Pentecost,
therefore, to the intent that all things may be uniformly observed everywhere
(in every parish), it seems good to the holy Synod that prayer be made to God,
standing.”
(Ref:- Canon XX- The
Canons of the 318 Holy Fathers Assembled in the City of Nice, in Bithynia;
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume XIV-The Seven Ecumenical
Councils, Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace)
3) St Basil
(~AD329-AD379):
St Basil explains
that we do not do prostration (and we pray only standing) on Sundays/ on the
days from Easter till Pentecost because those days remind us that we have
‘rose’ with Christ and are called to look heavenwards in prayer:
..We pray standing,
on the first day of the week, but we do not all know the reason. On the day of the resurrection (or “standing
again”) we remind ourselves of the grace given to us by standing at prayer, not
only because we rose with Christ, and are bound to “seek those things which are
above,” but because the day seems to us to be in some sense an image of the age
which we expect… Of necessity, then, the church teaches her own foster children
to offer their prayers on that day standing,...Moreover all Pentecost is a
reminder of the resurrection expected in the age to come… On this day the rules
of the church have educated us to prefer the upright attitude of prayer, for by
their plain reminder they, as it were, make our mind to dwell no longer in the
present but in the future.”
(Ref: Chapter XXVII,
De Spiritu Sancto; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume VIII-
‘Basil- Select Letters and Works’, Edited by Philip Schaff)
4) St John Cassian
(~AD360–435 AD):
St John Cassian is
known for noting down the life and times of Egyptian monks and Desert Fathers.
He mentions that the Egyptian monks don’t fast and don’t do prostrations from
Easter to the Sunday of Pentecost.
“This, too, we ought
to know,—that from the evening of Saturday which precedes the Sunday, up to the
following evening, among the Egyptians they never kneel, nor from Easter to
Whitsuntide (Sunday of Pentecost); nor do they at these times observe a rule of
fasting.”
(Ref: Chapter XVIII,
Book II- The Twelve
Books on the Institutes of the Coenobia, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series
II, Volume XI, Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace)
In Christ,
Rincy John
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