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04-05-2013 PASCHAL MESSAGE
BY ARCHBISHOP E L I S E Y OF SOUROZH
TO THE PASTORS
AND ALL FAITHFUL CHILDREN
OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
Dearly beloved in the Lord,
honourable pastors, God-loving monastics and laypeople,
dear brothers and sisters!
I greet you most warmly on the great feast of the Bright Resurrection of Christ with the life-affirming, apostolic affirmation of our faith:
Christ is Risen!
Christ our God has made us pass from death to life, from earth to heaven. These words of the Paschal canon wash over our souls as waves of saving grace. Now heaven is open to us, and Christ touches our hearts with His uncreated Light.
In the joy of Pascha we recognise the Risen Christ as Our Saviour and King. He, Our Lord and God, having taken human nature from the Virgin Mary, preached the Kingdom of God to people and revealed Himself as the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn 14.6). To those who received Him, He gave power to become children of God (Jn 1:12). Those who reject Him He suffers to condemn Him, to crucify Him and to give Him over to death. Descending, however, into deathly Hades, Christ leads man out of it and resurrects him by His Resurrection. This is our Pascha: a Passover from darkness to light, from death to life and from earth to heaven.
The joyful and radiant paschal celebration is a foretaste of the life of eternity for which the Lord is preparing us by His Divine Providence. Christ leads us to this new life, without compelling us or overriding our will. It depends on us whether we will destroy our natural life by the poison of sin, which drags this world down into the depths of hell, or whether we shall give ourselves over to the saving hands of God that draw us up to the Resurrection. In choosing the bright path of the Resurrection, we are responding to the summons proclaimed during the paschal celebration: Enter ye all into the joy of your Lord (Mt 25:21). For us true happiness will be to hear the call of the Son of God: Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Mt 25:34).
Life in the Resurrection is participation in the Kingdom of the conquering love of God. The beauty of our earthly world is revealed in the reflected Light of the Resurrection of Christ. May many come to believe in this truth and may people sense that life is eternal, that death is only a passing over into the Resurrection, that love never faileth (1 Cor 13:8) and that its power lies in God.
Congratulating you on the great feast of the Pascha of Christ, I prayerfully wish that you will hear in your hearts the call of Christ to enter into the joy of His Resurrection that fills all with light.
Christ is Risen Indeed!
+Elisey
ARCHBISHOP OF SOUROZH
The Pascha of Christ, 2013
London