Easter is the feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead — the oldest, highest, and most central celebration of the Christian year. Every other movable feast and fast is calculated from it; every Sunday is a weekly Easter. The date is determined by the Paschal computation established at the Council of Nicaea (325): Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox (March 21), placing it between March 22 and April 25. The earliest Christians appear to have observed an annual Pascha from a very early period, though the precise origins are debated. The Quartodeciman controversy of the second century — whether to celebrate the Pascha on Nisan 14 (regardless of the day of the week) or always on a Sunday — attests that the observance was already widespread and deeply important by the mid-100s. Polycarp of Smyrna reportedly discussed the matter with Anicetus of Rome around 155 (Eusebius, HE 5.24), and the issue was sharp enough to prompt Victor of Rome to threaten excommunication of the Asian churches, a threat moderated by Irenaeus's famous appeal for peace. The Nicene resolution in favor of the Sunday observance became universal in the mainstream Church, though some groups maintained the Quartodeciman practice for centuries. The Great Vigil of Easter is among the most ancient liturgies in Christianity, with roots traceable to at least the third century (Apostolic Tradition). By the fourth century, Egeria describes an elaborate Jerusalem vigil with baptisms, and Augustine attests a similar pattern in North Africa.

The Great Vigil, which the BCP 2019 describes as 'the first liturgy of Easter Day,' begins in darkness. The Paschal Candle is lit from new fire — a symbol of Christ as the light of the world entering the darkness of the tomb. The Exsultet, the great hymn of praise to the Paschal Candle, is among the most magnificent pieces of Christian hymnody, attested from at least the fourth century (Ambrose may have composed an early version). The vigil readings trace salvation history from creation through the Exodus to the prophets, building to the proclamation of the Resurrection Gospel. Historically, the Vigil was the primary occasion for baptism — new Christians dying and rising with Christ through the waters, emerging to receive their first Eucharist on the night of the Resurrection. The BCP 2019 provides for baptism or renewal of baptismal vows at the Vigil. The Easter morning liturgy opens with the Paschal greeting: 'Alleluia! Christ is risen! / The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!' — a form attested across virtually every Christian tradition. The fifty days of Eastertide that follow (through Pentecost) are treated as a single unbroken feast — no fasting, no kneeling for prayer, Alleluias throughout. Easter eggs, the custom of which is documented from at least the thirteenth century, symbolize the sealed tomb and new life breaking forth. Easter is not a day but a season.

Adoniram Judson was born on August 9, 1788, in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of a Congregational minister. He graduated from Brown University in 1807 and Andover Theological Seminary in 1810, where he joined a small circle of students committed to foreign mission. In 1812 he was among the first missionaries commissioned by the newly formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sailing for India with his wife Ann Hasseltine — herself a woman of remarkable conviction, who had weighed the cost of the mission in published correspondence before agreeing to marry him and leave everything familiar behind.

During the voyage, Judson studied the Greek New Testament and the Baptist arguments for believer's baptism. By the time the ship reached Calcutta, he and Ann had become convinced Baptists — a rupture with the ABCFM that left them without institutional support but opened the door to what would become the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

Unable to remain in British India under East India Company restrictions, Judson settled in Rangoon, Burma, in 1813. Progress was painfully slow: six years of sustained effort yielded his first Burmese convert. But steady translation work and friendship with the Karen people eventually produced growing communities of faith.

The First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826) brought catastrophe. Judson was arrested as a suspected British spy and held for twenty-one months in the death prison at Ava under brutal conditions — bound in leg irons, crowded with other prisoners, denied adequate food. Ann worked ceaselessly for his release, personally negotiating with Burmese officials, smuggling food and medicine into the prison, and caring for their newborn daughter — all while gravely ill herself. He survived; she died in 1826, months after the peace was concluded. Their infant daughter Maria died the following year.

Judson pressed on. He completed his translation of the entire Bible into Burmese in 1834. That same year he married Sarah Hall Boardman, the widow of a fellow missionary who had remained in Burma after her first husband's death rather than return to America — a choice that reflected the same unflinching commitment that had marked Ann. Sarah became a gifted translator in her own right, working in Burmese and several Karen dialects, before her health failed. She died in 1845 on a voyage home, leaving Judson with several young children.

He also compiled a comprehensive Burmese-English dictionary, finished posthumously by his colleagues. Both translation projects required mastering a tonal language without any prior translation infrastructure. The Burmese Bible became the foundation of an indigenous Christian literature and remained the standard text well into the twentieth century.

In 1846 Judson married Emily Chubbuck, a successful American author who gave up her literary career to join him in Burma — a sacrifice that drew public attention and some criticism, but which she undertook with clear-eyed resolve. His health, broken by the years of imprisonment, never fully recovered. He died at sea on April 12, 1850, on a voyage taken for his health, and was buried in the Indian Ocean. He had served in Burma for thirty-seven years.

Judson's commemoration in St. Bernard's Breviary signals an ecumenical acknowledgment: he was a Baptist, and his inclusion among the Breviary's commemorations recognizes missionary faithfulness across denominational lines. The tradition emphasizes his endurance — imprisonment, repeated bereavement, chronic illness — as a kind of suffering-witness that parallels martyrdom without its death. Francis Wayland's near-contemporary memoir (1853), based on extensive primary sources, established the interpretive frame within which Judson has been remembered: the persevering pioneer whose pain was inseparable from his productivity. The story of Ann Judson's heroic advocacy during his imprisonment became central to the American missionary imagination and is transmitted as a companion tradition to his own. Later hagiography has occasionally sentimentalized the narrative; the documentary record — his own letters and the Wayland memoir — supports a more austere portrait of a man who endured, translated, and died at his post. His Burmese Bible is treated in the tradition as his monument, the enduring fruit of his suffering.