Pascha 2001

Beloved sons and daughters in the Lord,

We hope that the Paschas of this year are for every one the definitive passage from what is earthly towards what is heavenly, that we can find during our live, as long as necessary, the road that leads from the spiritual state of servitude, of which the price is death, to the one of freedom, leading in life, from error to the truth, from doubt to the certainty of the faith.

      As your pastor, I address you with the salutation full of elation: Christ is Risen! And I assure you, on my part, as your spiritual father, that the Resurrection is the crowning achievement of the great message of the Gospel, the one that announces the presence of the Lord to the world, his teaching and his action.

      This year we, all the Christians together, celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who places the seasons and years in his own power, addresses his message in favor of unity, since this year is the one that inaugurates a new century and a new millennium; He repeats that it is His presence "that renews everything" (Acts 21:8); creation is renewed by the presence of Christ (2 Cor. 5:7). It is a questions, in this way therefore, of an invitation made by God to all the Christians in view of confessing and proclaiming the Resurrection of the Lord as a message destined for entire Humanity; it is a message of peace and joy. It announces benefactions.

      Today, all together, in a single voice and a single spirit, we renew the confession of our Faith; we make it shown towards heaven as a clamor of joy and triumph, and also, as a prayer and supplication. We ask the Resurrection Lord to bless us and to assist us in the battle that we are leading in this life.

      We have the conscience to have a long route to travel before accomplishing the Lord's commandment that Saint Basil the Great cites in his Divine Liturgy: "Every time that you eat of this bread and that you drink from this cup, it is my death that you commemorate. It is my resurrection that you confess." But "the cup" is not at all common any more! Yet today, as the Resurrected Lord has accorded it to us, we sing, all the Christians together, the hymn of elation of our Church that is addressed to all men: "It is the day of the Resurrection, let's be illuminated by this celebration, and let's embrace one another. Let's say, brothers, and those who hate us, let's pardon everyone in the Resurrection, and let's proclaim this: Christ is Risen from the dead; by death he has conquered death, and to those who are in the tombs, he has given life."

+ Metropolitan Jeremy of France

Translated from the French by Daryle Lamoureux