"Pascha"

St. Augustine, Replies to Questions of Januarius, Book II (400 A.D.) (Letter LV)

https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf101.vii.1.LV.html

Ch. II

3. You ask, “Wherefore does the anniversary on which we celebrate the Passion of the Lord not fall, like the day which tradition has handed down as the day of His birth, on the same day every year?” and you add, “If the reason of this is connected with the week and the month, what have we to do with the day of the week or the state of the moon in this solemnity?”  The first thing which you must know and remember here is, that the observance of the Lord’s natal day is not sacramental, but only commemorative of His birth, and that therefore no more was in this case necessary, than that the return of the day on which the event took place should be marked by an annual religious festival.  The celebration of an event becomes sacramental in its nature, only when the commemoration of the event is so ordered that it is understood to be significant of something which is to be received with reverence as sacred [Sancte accipiendum].  Therefore we observe Pascha in such a manner as not only to recall the facts of the death and resurrection of Christ to remembrance, but also to find a place for all the other things which, in connection with these events, give evidence as to the import of the sacrament.  For since, as the apostle wrote, “He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification,” a certain transition from death to life has been consecrated in that Passion and Resurrection of the Lord.  For the word Pascha itself is not, as is commonly thought, a Greek word: those who are acquainted with both languages affirm it to be a Hebrew word. It is not derived, therefore, from the Passion, because of the Greek word πάσχειν, signifying to suffer, but it takes its name from the transition, of which I have spoken, from death to life; the meaning of the Hebrew word Pascha being, as those who are acquainted with it assure us, a passing over or transition.  To this the Lord Himself designed to allude, when He said, "He that believeth in Me is passed from death to life.”  And the same evangelist who records that saying is to be understood as desiring to give emphatic testimony to this, when, speaking of the Lord as about to celebrate with His disciples the passover, at which He instituted the sacramental supper, he says, “When Jesus knew that His hour was come, that He should depart from this world unto the Father.”  This passing over from this mortal life to the other, the immortal life, that is, from death to life, is set forth in the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord.

3. This passing from death to life is meanwhile wrought in us by faith, which we have for the pardon of our sins and the hope of eternal life, when we love God and our neighbor; “for faith worketh by love,” and “the just shall live by his faith;” “and hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”  According to this faith and hope and love, by which we have begun to be “under grace,” we are already dead together with Christ, and buried together with Him by baptism into death; as the apostle hath said, “Our old man is crucified with Him;” and we have risen with Him, for “He hath raised us up together, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places.”  Whence also he gives this exhortation: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”  In the next words, “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory,” he plainly gives us to understand that our passing in this present time from death to life by faith is accomplished in the hope of that future final resurrection and glory, when “this corruptible,” that is, this flesh in which we now groan, “shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality.”  ...The whole Church, therefore, while here in the conditions of pilgrimage and mortality, expects that to be accomplished in her at the end of the world which has been shown first in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the first-begotten from the dead,” seeing that the body of which He is the Head is none other than the Church.

Ch. III

5. This renewal, therefore, of our life is a kind of transition from death to life which is made first by faith, so that we rejoice in hope and are patient in tribulation, while still “our outward man perisheth, but the inward man is renewed day by day.”  It is because of this beginning of a new life, because of the new man which we are commanded to put on, putting off the old man, “purging out the old leaven, that we may be a new lump, because Christ our passover is sacrificed for us;” it is, I say, because of this newness of life in us, that the first of the months of the year has been appointed as the season of this solemnity...