† B A R T H O L O M E W
BY GOD’S MERCY
ARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE-NEW
ROME
AND ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH
TO THE PLENITUDE OF THE CHURCH:
MAY THE GRACE, PEACE AND MERCY
OF CHRIST RISEN IN GLORY BE WITH
YOU ALL
* * *
Dearest brother Hierarchs and beloved children in the
Lord,
Having arrived at Holy Pascha and becoming partakers
of the joy of the Resurrection, we praise the Lord of glory, who trampled down
death by death and resurrected with Him the entire race of Adam, opening for us
all the gates of paradise.
The splendid Resurrection of Christ is the
confirmation that what prevails in the life of the world is not death, but the
Savior who abolished the dominion of death. Formerly known to us as the Word
without flesh and subsequently as the Word who assumed flesh for us on account
of love for humankind, who died as man and was risen with might as God, He is
the Savior who will come again in glory to fulfil the Divine Economy.
The mystery and experience of the Resurrection
constitutes the core of the ecclesiastical life. The radiant worship, the
sacred mysteries, the life of prayer, fasting and ascesis, pastoral ministry
and good witness in the world – all of these emanate the fragrance of Paschal joy.
The life of the faithful in the Church is a daily Pascha, “a joy from above,”
“the joy of salvation,” as well as the “salvation as joy.”[1]
This is why the services of Holy and Great Week are
not gloomy but filled with the victorious power of the Resurrection. There, we
discover that the Cross does not have the last word in the plan for the
salvation of humankind and the world. This is foreshadowed already on the
Saturday of Lazarus. The raising from the dead of Christ’s intimate friend is a
prefigurement of the “common resurrection.” The hymn “Today is hung upon the
wood [of the Cross]” comes to a climax in the invocation “Show us, too, your
glorious Resurrection.” Before the Epitaphios, we chant “I magnify your
Passion, I praise your burial, together with your Resurrection.” And during the
Paschal service, we resoundingly declare the true meaning of the Cross: “For
behold, through the Cross, joy has come into the whole world.”
The “chosen and holy day” of Pascha is the dawn of
the “eighth day,” the first-fruit of the “new creation.” The experience of our
own resurrection, the great “miracle of my salvation.”[2]
It is the lived affirmation that the Lord suffered and was led to death for our
sake and that He rose from the dead for us “foreshadowing for us the resurrection
for boundless ages.”[3]
Throughout the Paschal period, we hymn with unparalleled poetry the
anthropological meaning of the resplendent Resurrection of Christ, the Passover
of humankind from slavery to genuine freedom, “the progression and ascension
from below to the above and to the promised land.”[4]
This salvific renewal in Christ is realized in the Church as a dynamic
extension of the Eucharistic ethos in the world, as “speaking the truth in
love,” as synergy with God for the transfiguration of the world, so that the
world may be rendered an image of the fullness of the final revelation of the
divine love in the Kingdom of the last times. Living in the risen Lord means
proclaiming the Gospel “to the ends of the earth,” in the manner of the Apostles;
it is the witness in practice of the grace that has appeared and the
expectation of the “new creation,” where “death shall be no more, neither shall
there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more.” (Rev. 21.4)
Faith in the Resurrection of Christ and in our own
co-resurrection does not deny the painful presence of death, pain and the cross
in the life of the world. We do not suppress the harsh reality or secure for
ourselves, through faith, a psychological assurance before death. However, we
know that the present life is not life in its entirety, that here we are
“sojourners,” that we belong to Christ and that we are journeying to His
eternal Kingdom. The presence of pain and death, no matter how tangible these
may be, does not constitute the ultimate reality. That lies in the definitive
abolition of death. In the Kingdom of God there is neither pain nor death, but
never-ending life. “Before your precious Cross,” we chant, “death is terrifying
for human beings; but after your glorious Passion, humankind is terrifying for
death.”[5]
Faith in Christ grants us power, perseverance and patience to endure trials.
Christ is the one who “heals us from every illness and delivers us from death.”
He is the one who has suffered for us and has revealed to us that God is “always
for us” and that God’s love for us belongs intrinsically to God’s truth. This
hopeful voice of divine love is echoed in Christ’s words to the paralytic “take
courage, my child” (Matt. 9.2) and to the woman with the issue of blood “take
courage, daughter” (Matt. 9.22), in His words “take courage; I have overcome
the world” (John 16.33) before the Passion, and to the imprisoned Apostle of
the Gentiles, threatened by death, “take courage, Paul” (Acts 23.11).
The present pandemic of the novel coronavirus has
demonstrated how fragile we are as human beings, how easily we are dominated by
fear and despondency, how frail our knowledge and self-confidence appear, how
antiquated the notion is that death comprises an event at the end of life and
that forgetting or suppressing death is the proper way of dealing with it.
Limit situations prove that we are incapable of handling our existence
resolutely, when we believe that death is an invincible reality and
insurmountable boundary. It is difficult to remain human without the hope of
eternity. This hope lives in the hearts of all doctors, nurses, volunteers,
donors and all those generously supporting their suffering brothers and sisters
in a spirit of sacrifice, offering and love. In this indescribable crisis, they
radiate resurrection and hope. They are the “Good Samaritans” that, at the risk
of their own lives, pour oil and wine on wounds; they are the modern-day
“Cyrenaeans” on the Golgotha of those lying in illness.
With these thoughts, most honorable Hierarchs and
dearest children in the Lord, we glorify the name of the Risen Lord which is
above all names, the source of life from His own light, who illumines the
universe with the light of the Resurrection. And we pray to Him, the physician
of our souls and bodies, who grants life and resurrection, that in His
ineffable loving-kindness He may condescend to the human race, in order to
grant us the precious gift of health and direct our steps on the straight ways,
to vouchsafe the divine gift of our freedom in the world, foreshadowing its
perfection in the heavenly Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit.
Christ is Risen!
At the Phanar, Holy Pascha 2020
† Bartholomew of Constantinople
Your fervent supplicant to the
Risen Lord
[1] The
Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann
1973-1983 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 137.
[2] Gregory the Theologian, On the Holy Pascha, PG
36.664.
[3] Gregory Palamas, On the Holy Ascension, PG
151.277.
[4] Gregory the Theologian, op. cit., 636.
[5] Doxastikon
of the Vespers of September 27.
