Bishop Gabriel's Pascha Message 1999

We shall be commemorating Pascha this year at the threshold of a third millennium. We are preparing ourselves to celebrate the two thousandth anniversary of the coming of our Saviour to the Earth. It is a coming that has brought the dawn of Freedom and given to the man who wants it the opportunity of going with Christ along the path of His victory and death, and of attaining the joy of the Resurrection and peace and salvation. The commemoration of Pascha brings us again to see the amazing love of God. It has conquered death and opened to us the way forward to resurrection and eternal life. If we live in this way alongside Christ in His death and Resurrection this feast will fill us with divine graces and will be for us a source of joy and consolation.

The pivotal point

      It is not surprising that the Resurrection of Christ should be the pivotal point of our faith. In it we celebrate the emptying of God the Word, Who was made man in order for us to be united with God. By His deeds and by His teaching on earth He has taught us to love. By His voluntary death on the Cross, He has brought us back to our first calling. And by His Resurrection He has totally liberated us from slavery, making us children of God. The Resurrection is then an inexhaustible spring: we need to drink from it continually. Our life will have more meaning, we will have a more positive attitude to life, we will live in hope and love, if we do this.

      The Resurrection is the crown of the work of salvation. It is the victory of the sacrificial love of Christ, the victory on the path of Golgotha, in the sufferings of the Cross and in His voluntary acceptance. He, the innocent One, was made culpable in His death. It was in this way that He conquered all evil. He came out of the Tomb raising our nature with His own. He has ushered us into a new era for humanity. He has opened up the vision of total renewal for people’s lives, a renewal centred on true liberty and true dignity. The Kingdom of love and peace alone, can guarantee this. In this the Resurrection and our faith are equally essential for the heart. So it is not by chance that the apostle Paul declares: "If Christ is not risen then our preaching is vain and our faith is also vain." (1 Cor 15:14).

Renewing our nature

      The Christ is raised to life again in order to raise us up again with Him. He has renewed our nature and riveted our life to hope. By His Resurrection He has wiped away the tears of orphans, consoled the afflicted, satisfied the starving with justice and given an appreciation of all that is good, true and just that man has produced since the dawn of time.

God’s love for all

      "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16). God has loved us with an eternal love, and God and His love remain identical with one another. We sense in the deepest part of us an abiding need for God. We need his Providence, His love, his compassion, and His forgiveness.

      In this feast of the glorious Resurrection we need to remember all the tribulations endured during this century - the bloody wars, the mass murders, the displaced people, the divisions and separations between the nations. This has been happening to the point of the break-up of the very core of society. We must pray at the approach of the new millennium that the Light bursting from the Tomb will illumine the coming time and that God in his goodness will be merciful to us and enable us to live in this divine light. Oh that the world may be able to liberate itself from its sufferings and be brought to the resolving of these acute problems. This, if it could happen, would mean a new world system could evolve based on the primacy of the most authentic human virtues: truth, goodness, justice and holiness, thus enabling man to live in freedom and honour.

      May God give us also the ability to remain firm in the faith and in the will to live in hope. Each feast of Pascha is a step further towards our own resurrection. Today at this cross-roads, between the second and third millennium of the Resurrection of Christ, we must be more and more sure that we will be heard and our prayers answered, and that a new dawn will rise up which will bring a smile across our face and cause joy to make its home in our hearts and light up our spirits.

      Our God who has suffered and been crucified, who is dead and raised, is the God of peace, love and hope. It is in this same hope that I proclaim to you all, members of our British Deanery, and your many friends throughout the world,

      Christ is risen; He is risen indeed!

Bishop Gabriel

Metropolitan of Western and Central Europe