OCA Chancery
Syosset, New York
To the Venerable Hierarchs, Reverend Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America
Dearly beloved,
CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED, HE IS RISEN!
I embrace all of you in the Holy Spirit as we rejoice in the unwaning brightness of the Lord’s Pascha. The tomb is empty and all of humanity—indeed all of creation—is called to enter into new and eternal life. The God-Man is risen and now human life is beckoned to enter into His divine glory. For in Christ God has chosen us “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. He destined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will” (Ephesians l:4-5).
From the empty tomb comes the fundamental proclamation that death has been swallowed up by life. It is this proclamation that reveals the Savior’s death on the cross as life-bearing and life-giving. And it is His life-creating death that now places the Church in the midst of the world as the new paradise whose beauty surpasses that of Eden.
As the new paradise, the Church, sustained and guided by the Holy Spirit, is given to the world in order to continue the ministry of the crucified and resurrected Lord. It is the Church which is now commissioned to announce and reveal that the realm of sin and death is vanquished. Thus, in our joy and in our fasting the missionary vocation of the Church is refreshed and bolstered. Now, as if for the first time, the Church is entrusted by the Lord Himself to extend His paradise—His Kingdom—throughout the world.
But in order for the ministry of Christ to continue—in order for the saving news of the empty tomb to expand the boundaries of paradise—this great and radiant Feast must be confirmed in and through our lives. For only when the Lord’s Pascha becomes our Pascha from death to life, paradise will expand, and in the end everyone and everything will rest in Christ Who will truly be “all in all” (Colossians 3:11).
What we celebrate today is the salvation of the world. What we celebrate today is the gift that takes away humanity’s suffering and overcomes all its fears. Through the Cross, the Tomb and the Resurrection on the third day, the world, steeped in countless divisions, violent conflict, agonizing misery and spiritual loneliness, is called to receive the unwaning light that leads to paradise. Here, in this new garden, all the maladies of human nature are cured. Here in the paradise of the Lord’s Church all evil and sin are consumed by the One Whose death has devoured death.
Beloved in the Lord, let us proceed from the empty tomb bearing in our hearts and on our lips the news that transfigures the universe. In word and deed let us proclaim this news so that others may be united to the new and eternal paradise where all shall bear the form of the resurrected Christ.
CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED, HE IS RISEN!
With love in the Risen Lord,
+ THEODOSIUS
Archbishop of Washington,
Metropolitan of All America and Canada