Preserving and Sharing the Light of Pascha
Now all creation is filled with light, heaven and earth, and the lower regions...
- from the Paschal Canon of St. John of Damascus
Dear Parishioners and Friends,
The labors of Great Lent and Holy Week have now ended, and we are rejoicing in the light of the Resurrection of Christ! This rejoicing is accompanied by an outward relaxation of our fasting, but we must now use the grace we have received to maintain inward attention to the state of our souls, in order precisely to keep the joy and peace that we have received, and to spread it abroad to our brothers as well as to the strangers God sends us.
If we can only radiate from within our souls the reality of Christ’s Resurrection, we can attract those who, burdened by the manifold cares of the secular world, are seeking for relief for their souls, joy, and inner certainty of God’s love for them. This is not an easy task, however, because our enemy the devil has spread many nets of deception and disinformation about the Resurrection of the Lord.
The enemy began this disinformation campaign on the very day of the Resurrection, when the corrupt leadership of the Jewish people bribed the guards to lie about the Resurrection, saying that the disciples had stolen the Lord’s Body (see Matthew 28). The lies continue to this day: witness the disturbing success of The Da Vinci Code, a novel that purports to tell the “ truth” that Christ really did not die and rise, a “discovery” supposedly uncovered by investigating “secrets” of bizarre Western medieval sects like the Knights Templar and a “code” supposedly found in Da Vinci’s Last Supper.
Why do people want to believe dark and ugly occult “truths” instead of the bright and joyful news of the Resurrection? It is, of course, because of the fallenness of human nature, the tendency to listen to the devil rather than God that was passed down to us since our First Parents fell in Paradise. What can break through this blindness and hardness of heart? Only holiness, only love, only the REALITY (not only arguments) of the Resurrection.
EXPERIENCED in the pure atmosphere of Orthodox prayer, quiet, and lovingkindness, agapi (spiritual love), philoxenia (hospitality), and all the virtues!
We are blessed in the Orthodox Church to have the witness of the Holy Apostles, Fathers, Martyrs, Monastic Fathers and Mothers - countless millions of the saints who, precisely by their faith in Christ and by the living power of His Resurrection, have healed the sick, raised the dead, reconciled enemies, risen to humanly impossible levels of moral perfection, and spread the saving, joyful, and light-bearing Gospel, the Good News of the Resurrection. By living in the sanctified, spiritual atmosphere of Orthodoxy that they lived in, we KNOW the Reality of the Resurrection, and we can share it with others!
Thus, beloved brothers and sisters, how important it is that during these Holy Days of the Sacred Penticosti - the exalted Fifty Days from the Resurrection through the Sunday of Pentecost - we not overindulge in eating and distractions, as if to “make up” for what we were “deprived of” during the Great Tesserakosti (the Forty Days) and the Megali Evdomada (Great Week). Yes, we have relaxed our discipline. Yes, we must pay attention to our jobs, our families, our homes, our gardens, and the various responsibilities we could not completely fulfill during Lent. But we must ALWAYS carry within our hearts the special little flame we received during the Holy Week, when we prepared and communed of the Life-Giving Body and Blood of the Risen Lord! We did not receive Jesus Christ in order to immediately forget Him, but rather to deepen and make more permanent and stable the attention of theheart to our sweetest Jesus.
By keeping this attention of the heart on Jesus Christ, we transform our senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch - and everything around us becomes filled with light, the eternal light of the Kingdom of the Resurrection! May this be our lot, now and in eternity! May our faith in the Resurrection save others, as well. Amen.