O Great and most sacred Pascha, Christ;
O Wisdom and Word and Power of God! Grant that we
partake of Thee fully in the unwaning day of Thy
Kingdom.
-from the Paschal Canon by St. John Damascene
When we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, we
proclaim it as the center of all history. By His
Death and Resurrection, the Lord re-creates His work
of Creation that was done at the beginning of the
world, and He inaugurates the eternal Kingdom that
will be fully manifested at the end of the world.
In the
curricula and books that dominate history education,
we are brainwashed into the idea that
man's history is a beginning-less and endless story
of "progress" from ignorance and superstition
into a "liberated" state of "freedom" and "prosperity" brought
about by "science." This view classes Christ's
resurrection along with countless other fabricated
myths that people can believe, if they want, but
which must not be allowed to interfere in the "march
of history" towards a bright and unlimited future
of global unity and materialistic happiness under
a benevolent and all-powerful government.
A Christian stands in absolute opposition to this
view of the world. God created this world to have
a beginning and an end, and this world is not an
end in itself. It is, rather, an arena in which man
works out his salvation. Each man's life is a short
and intense race which he conducts according to Christ
and in Christ, or not. The purpose of each man's
life individually, and the entire world, is to prepare
for God's Judgment.
Our Savior's
Resurrection is not simply a miracle that demonstrates
His Divinity, though it certainly
does that. It is the destruction of death, the final
and totally efficacious rescue of His creation from
the corruption that the devil and sin brought into
the world. He has already definitively triumphed
over death, the devil, and hell. All that remains
now is for men to unite themselves to the Risen Christ
or not, to join His Body, the Church, or not, to
fight for Him or against Him. When He returns in
glory at the end of the world, to judge all the living
and the dead from the beginning of the world, the
only thing that will matter is that we find favor
in His sight. On that day, all the empty promises
of a secular "salvation" and man's "progress" will
be revealed as the lies that they are.
Today,
right now, it is critical for our spiritual lives
not to fall back into a worldly and anxious
way of living and thinking, but to maintain the spiritual
vision we acquired during Great Lent and Holy Week.
By staying faithful to prayer and spiritual reading,
we can maintain the Paschal vision of our life, by
which we interpret our daily activities not as part
of some meaningless struggle for existence, not as
a restless, neurotic escape from being trampled by
the march of "progress," but as our advancing
in hope "from glory to glory," as we strive
to arrive at the final vision of the face of our
Beloved Bridegroom, who will reward every one of
us who is faithful to Him.
Concerning the Resurrection
For if there is no resurrection, let us eat
and drink: let us pursue a life of pleasure and
enjoyment. If there is no resurrection, wherein
do we differ from the irrational brutes? If there
is no resurrection, let us hold the wild beasts
of the field happy who have a life free from
sorrow. If there is no resurrection, neither
is there any God nor Providence, but all things
are driven and borne along of themselves. For
observe how we see most righteous men suffering
hunger and injustice and receiving no help in
the present life, while sinners and unrighteous
men abound in riches and every delight. And who
in his senses would take this for the work of
a righteous judgment or a wise providence? There
must be, therefore, there must be, a resurrection.
For God is just and is the rewarder of those
who submit patiently to Him. Wherefore if it
is the soul alone that engages in the contests
of virtue, it is also the soul alone that will
receive the crown. And if it were the soul alone
that revels in pleasures, it would also be the
soul alone that would be justly punished. But
since the soul does not pursue either virtue
or vice separate from the body, both together
will obtain that which is their just due.
We shall therefore rise again, our souls being
once more united with our bodies, now made incorruptible
and having put off corruption, and we shall stand
beside the awful judgment-seat of Christ: and
the devil and his demons and the man that is
his, that is the Antichrist and the impious and
the sinful, will be given over to everlasting
fire: not material fire like our fire, but such
fire as God would know. But those who have done
good will shine forth as the sun with the angels
into life eternal, with our Lord Jesus Christ,
ever seeing Him and being in His sight and deriving
unceasing joy from Him, praising Him with the
Father and the Holy Spirit throughout the limitless
ages of ages. Amen.
- from the Exact
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by St. John of Damascus, Book IV, c. 27.