04/04/2010
A PASCHAL MESSAGE
TO THE PIOUS FLOCK
IN
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
(Jn 1, 4-5).
Christ is Risen, dear brothers and sisters!
After man had banished true life from this world through sin, it reappeared only with Christ. Until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ into this earthly world there had been neither life, nor light, but only darkness and the shadow of death. The holy Evangelist John the Theologian calls Christ the Word of life (1 Jn. 1, 1), Who giveth life unto the world (Jn. 6, 33) and came so that so that they might have life (Jn. 10, 10). Christ said, 'I am the resurrection and the life' (Jn. 11, 25), before raising from the dead his friend Lazarus, the four-day-dead whose corpse was already corrupt. Now, through his glorious Resurrection, together with Himself the Risen Christ has raised us, who were dead through sin, and scattered the darkness with his Divine Light: now are all things filled with light, heaven and earth and the places beneath the earth… The Church calls the light of the Resurrection unapproachable, but it is unapproachable only for a time, only for those who have not yet left this earthly vale, earthly logic, earthly limitations, the all too easy earthly inclination to sin.
It is good for us to ponder on this now, when we have run the course of the Great Fast and cleansed ourselves from the deathly sins that we have committed and so become the Lord’s own, become Christ’s. The Word, or Logos, of life allows us mortals even here on earth to partake of his heavenly Logic, of his everlasting Life and so cast off all that is logic-less, meaningless, wordless, logos-less, that is, to cast off the devil, sin and death. From the limitations of time and space we who live by Him and through Him, having Him in us, prepare to enter into another reality, into the realm of the new being of eternal life. From the realm of created darkness into the realm of uncreated and everlasting light. This light cannot be taken over by darkness. Thus, our souls, cleansed through repentance, also become inaccessible to the darkness of sin. Eternity is revealed to us by the Resurrection of Christ and we can freely enter into it through voluntarily rejecting sinful evil and sinful death, through love for goodness and light, love for Christ the Giver of Life.
As we live the Paschal celebration, we are of course aware that it is of short duration, passing, like everything else in this fleeting life. And after the feast the deeper we immerse ourselves in the everyday cares of this world once more, the harder it becomes to keep inside ourselves the awareness of the eternal Paschal celebration .
The Holy Scriptures warn us of the danger of flagging in our spiritual efforts, saying, 'In the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted and gave glory to the God of heaven' (Rev. 11, 13). According to the holy Fathers, the seven thousand who perished refers here to those who are attached to this present life, which is reckoned as seven days, and do not await the eighth day – the resurrection.
In reality, we are called throughout our whole life to prepare for this very eighth day, for the age to come, for the everlasting Easter. This age to come is called a day because in it there will be no night. The sun will not incline towards the west, it will never set. And as the Angel proclaimed to St John the Theologian, there will be time no longer (Rev. 10, 6), and then the everlasting light of Christ the Giver of Light and Life will shine forth to us, as to the apostles on Mt Tabor, not for a mere instant, but for ever.
Of the Paschal celebration which is offered every day, St Theodore the Studite writes that it is ‘the cleansing of sins, heartfelt contrition, tears of compunction, a clear conscience, the mortification of the earthly members from fornication, impurity, passion, evil lust, and every other vice that operates inside us’. Thus, celebrating Easter every day by mortifying passions and resurrecting virtues, we put our hope in the gift of grace which the never-setting Sun, the Risen Lord Who suffered for us, will bestow on us, the Eternal Paschal celebration in the heavens.
Truly Christ is risen!
Archbishop MARK
Pascha, 2010
