EASTER PASTORALS: Celebrate the Resurrection of Christ (04/04/04)

EASTER PASTORALS

Celebrate the Resurrection of Christ

Paschal Letter of the Permanent Conference of Ukrainian Orthodox Bishops Beyond the Borders of Ukraine to the venerable clergy and devout faithful of the Holy Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

May the Light of the Risen Lord, shining in splendor, illumine your every good and holy work so that those who behold them may glorify our Father in heaven!

Each year at Pascha, we are reintroduced to the genius of the author of the Paschal Canon, the Venerable John of Damascus, a Christian teacher of profound faith. In the splendid verse of that canon, which proclaims profound spiritual realities, we are invited to declare and to spiritually relive and reap the fruits of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's Resurrection. We proclaim anew to the culture in which we live that, "Indeed Christ is Risen!" Our celebration far surpasses the mundane and fleeting concerns of this life for "this [our Passover] is a chosen, sacred day, the unique Sabbath of the King and Lord, the Feast of all feasts" for on it our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rested from His labor - His saving passion and death endured voluntarily for the life of the world and our salvation - saw that it was good, and through His Resurrection brought us "from death to life and from earth to heaven," giving us a taste of eternity (Song I and VIII of the Paschal Canon).

Each year the words of this spiritual masterpiece invite us all: "Come! Let us purify ourselves and then shall we behold Christ ... celebrate the Resurrection of Christ ... for in Him is our foundation."

We, in these first years of this 21st century, need to remind ourselves that Christ is indeed the foundation of our Orthodox Christian way of life as a particular tradition and heritage made holy by the Risen Lord through the presence and preaching of His First-called Apostle Andrew in our native Ukraine. We need to remind ourselves that reducing Christ - risen from the dead - to some formula, some sort of nominal and convenient belief system, be it personal or societal, does injustice to His Gospel of Life, the spiritual constitution of every Christian.

The society in which we live today, though technologically advanced, is confronted by the same ills that confronted the people of Christ's era and the earliest Christians following Pentecost. Poverty, injustice, amorality, revolutions, military occupation, religious communities with a political agenda, slaughter on a grand scale - they all plagued society then as they do now. The followers of the Risen Christ proclaimed the Gospel of Life to the troubled and confused world of their time, especially by example of their personal way of life. They had no political agenda, they coerced not. The secret of their success was their loyalty to Christ resurrected. They were formed by faith, convinced that all life is sacred and that true religion - the binding of one's self to God - is, paraphrasing Apostle James, in helping others to know that God is Love and to love is to serve.

These followers of Christ purified themselves first and repented or simply put - changed their attitude - served the least of Christ's brethren, regardless of race, gender or religion. They remained faithful to the spotless Bride of Christ - His Church - and thereby altered the course of history and the face of civilization, creating a strong, positive impact on all aspects of social life.

We now live in an age of convenient compromises. Marriage, the foundation of society, sanctified by Father, Son and Holy Spirit from the very beginning and affirmed by the Son of God in Cana of Galilee, has and is being distorted, slowly compromised and redefined. Abortion is a matter-of-fact occurrence, just another form of family planning. The Church, often harmed by the actions of its members - clergy and laity alike - is the object of slow and methodical marginalization, its forms of worship, Western or Eastern, being reduced to exotic and charming trappings of a bygone era - an "unenlightened" period in human history.

Pascha 2004 challenges us to be faithful to the Gospel and to the Kingdom of God of which we became inheritors at our Baptism. Our predecessors - men and women, fathers, mothers and children of faith, once altered the face of the world. Is it so difficult to believe that the world in which we live and work out our salvation can again be enhanced by a new generation of apostles and disciples - people of faith - who after personal purification, could be enabled to behold Christ in their fellow man? Is it so difficult to believe that we can overcome the evils of our time instead of enabling them?

We believe, we are convinced that we can accomplish as much as our predecessors in the faith if only we will, in the words of St. Paul, "behave in a manner fitting our vocation" and be convinced that we and all who celebrate this "day of Resurrection" in the U.S.A., Canada, England, Latin America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Ukraine are "a particular people ... a holy nation," purified and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, called to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, called to witness the truth despite the climate of our time.

May this day of Resurrection, Pascha, sanctify us and bring us ever closer to Christ and through Him to each other, as we proclaim: "Christ is Risen from the dead trampling down death by death and to those in the tombs bestowing life!"

Ý Wasyly, Metropolitan
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada

Ý Constantine, Metropolitan
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. and Diaspora

Ý John, Archbishop
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada

Ý Antony, Archbishop
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A.

Ý Vsevolod, Archbishop
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A.

Ý Ioan, Archbishop
Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Diaspora

Ý Yurij, Archbishop
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada

Ý Jeremiah, Bishop
Ukrainian Orthodox Eparchy in Latin America

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