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I realize your screen name is a swat at the Latin church's notion that those outside their visible communion can be saved if they are "invincibly ignorant", but sometimes you do seem to earn the handle.

Thank you oh great one. I'll meditate on this.

The feast of Our Lord's Resurrection is only called "Easter" in English speaking countries. In countries where romance languages are spoken, and in Greece, the name is derived from the Hebrew name for Passover with consonants psch. In modern Hebrew, the vowels given make it Pesach. In Greek the Feast of the Resurrection is called Pascha. (Note the vowels in modern Hebrew were added by (sadly) anti-Christian rabbis in the middle ages, so what vowels ancient Hebrew used is not immediately clear.)

Ok. If Ressurection day is called pasach in other countries what's your problem with me celebrating Passover?

St. Constantine called the feast Pascha. In English the feast became known as Easter because it always fell in the month of Oestre, an Anglo-Saxon month name derived from a pagan goddess's name. To object to it on that basis, however, is a bit like objecting to Maundy Thursday because Thursday is named for the Norse god Thor, or to the Fourth of July because July is named for Julius Ceasar (who, after all is a pagan god, having been voted divine honors by the Roman Senate).

I have a problem with the Lord's resurrection day being named after a pagan goddess. If that makes me ignorant so be it. Easter=Ishtar. If you disagree perhaps you should change your screen name.

Tonight at 6PM, Ginny and I will be celebrating our first sunset resurrection service at the New Church we have been attending.

This past week had the same time line as when Jesus became the Passover, Wednesday, he was sacrificed between the two evenings, (3:PM), and put in the grave just before the Sabbath of the Passover feast began in the evening of (Wednesday/Thursday), and He was in the grave 3 days and nights, which meant that Saturday just before the weekly Sabbath ended, Jesus rose, and was already gone when the women came to the tomb early Sunday morning.

Have a great resurrection day service everyone, regardless of what you are calling it.

Jim and Ginny H (^g^)

The problems with your post are 1) you take offense at a contentless naming convention on the basis of the fact that it derives from a pagan goddess, 2) make up a bogus association with a Babylonian fertility goddess utterly unknown to the Anglo-Saxons rather than getting the history right, and 3) (and for an Orthodox this is the clincher) dishonor the memory of St. Constantine is one of perhaps a dozen saints the Church honors with the title Equal-to-the-Apostles by baselessly asserting that he had something to do with the supposed soiling of the Feast of the Resurrection by its English name.

May your (early) celebration of the Christian passover, the Holy Pascha in which Christ Our Lord passed over from death to life, of which the Jewish passover is but a type or shadow be blessed. (But don't go celebrating Jewish festivals--the Church had no end of troubles with Judaizing heretics early on (cf. Acts), we don't need a revival.)