Pascha the Passover of the World

"The Church is the entrance into the risen life of Christ. It is communion in life eternal. Joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.  It is the expectation of the day without evening of the Kingdom. Of the fulfillment of all things and all life in Christ. In Christ death itself has become an act of life; for he has filled it with himself with his love and his light. And if I make this new life of Christ my own; mine this hunger and thirst for the kingdom, mine this expectation of Christ, mine the certitude that Christ is life then my very death will be an act of communion with life. For neither life nor death can separate us from the love of Christ. I do not know how and when the fulfillment will come. I do not know when all things will be consummated in Christ. I know nothing about the whens and the how's. But I do know that in Christ this great passage the Pascha the passover of the world has begun. That the light of the world comes to us in the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit. For Christ is risen and life reigns."

-Alexander Schmemann in For the Life of the World

2 No's 1 Yes and Eschatology!

" When I die you can write my immemorian in one brief paragraph. You can say that my vision consisted in 2 No's 1 Yes and the Kingdom of God (eschatology). The first No is to secularism in all it's forms. To any attempt to define man and the world without reference to God. The second No is to religion. By this I mean religion as one part of life. One sacred compartment as opposed to all the rest considered as profane and worldly. Christ did not come to bring religion. Christianity is not religion. Christ brought the Kingdom of God. The righteousness the peace the joy in the Holy Spirit. This is my yes. Yes to Christ and the Church. Yes to Christ's Church understood not as an institution or an organization or an agency of any sort. However helpful and laudable it's purposes. But Yes to the church as the sacramental presence in this world of the eternal life of the world to come. Yes to the whole of God's creation. To all of Life. As found and fulfilled in it's God given substance in Christ and in the Church." 

- Father Alexander Schmemann