From Diocese of Sourozh

Archbishop Innokenty's Paschal Epistle 2007

This item posted 8th April 2007

CHRIST IS RISEN!

Dearly beloved Archpastors, pastors and all children of the Diocese of Sourozh, brothers and sisters!

With all my heart I congratulate you with the Feast of feasts, the bright Resurrection of Christ.

‘On this great day', writes St Gregory the Theologian, ‘the radiant choir of the angels is filled with joy, singing the triumphant song'.

While we celebrate and rejoice, let us not, however, forget the high price of our salvation, of our freedom from the slavery of sin. By the path of suffering and an agonising death on the cross, Our Lord descended into the nethermost depths of hell in order to destroy its age-old chains and to lead out our suffering human nature, with which He had clothed Himself in His ineffable love for man. Henceforth hell has no more power over us, our death is overcome by the death of Christ, our bondage to sin is destroyed and abolished. Christ died on the cross and rose again, and we celebrate the victory of His divine love for man – the most perfect of God's creatures.

‘How can we respond to this love?' asks the ever-memorable Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. In answer, he says, ‘We can receive this love with reverence, with trembling hearts, we can stand in amazement before this miracle of unconquerable divine love… And all our life, all of it without exception, we can turn into gratitude, not in words, not in hymns of thanksgiving, but a living gratitude: loving every person as God loves him or her; at any price and to the end'.

Let us remember that each of us is a warrior of Christ, that every one of us is called to go forth into the ‘invisible battle' for his eternal soul. If we are indeed warriors of Christ, then the Pascha of the Lord is only beginning for us here on earth. Now it appears as a reflection of the eternal blessedness, but it extends indefinitely, into eternity, unto the ‘never-ending day' of the age to come.

Our Paschal joy is all the deeper, in that unity and peace are now firmly established in our Diocese of Sourozh and that the tendency to division has already passed into history.

Very soon, on the 17 th of May, the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, it is planned that the long-awaited historic event of the re-establishment of Eucharistic communion with the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia will be accomplished.

We are praying and we shall pray to the Saviour for the reinstating of the full unity of the Russian Orthodox Church and for the final overcoming of the consequences of the national catastrophe of 1917.

This year we are celebrating Easter together with our brothers and sisters of other confessions. We are glad to share with them in this common celebration and we address our Paschal greetings to them.

Again and again, dearly beloved brothers and sisters, I greet all of you with the Easter of the Lord and proclaim:

CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!

+ INNOKENTY

Archbishop of Korsun, Temporary Administrator of the Diocese of Sourozh