PARTIARCHAL PASCHAL LETTER ” 2024

+ 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
* * *

Most honorable brother Hierarchs and beloved children in the Lord,

By the pleasure and grace of God, the giver of all gifts, having run the race of Holy and Great Lent and spent with compunction the Week of our Lord’s Passion, behold we delight in the celebration of His splendid Resurrection, through which we were redeemed from the tyranny of Hades.

The glorious Resurrection of the Lord Christ from the dead is a shared resurrection of the entire race of mortals and a foretaste of the perfection of all, as well as of the fulfilment of the Divine Oikonomia in the heavenly Kingdom. We participate in the ineffable mystery of the Resurrection in the Church, being sanctified in its sacraments and experiencing Pascha, “which has opened to us the gates of Paradise,” not as a recollection of an event in the past, but as the quintessence of ecclesiastical life, as the presence of Christ ever among us, closer to us than we to ourselves. On Pascha, the Orthodox faithful discover their true selves as being in Christ; they are integrated into the movement of all things to the End Times, “with inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1.8), as “children of light . . . and children of day” (1 Thess. 5.5).

The central feature of Orthodox life is its Resurrectional pulse. Philosophers have wrongly described Orthodox spirituality as “sullen” and “autumnal.” By contrast, Westerners rightly praise the refined perceptiveness of the Orthodox in relation to the meaning and depth of the paschal experience. Yet this faith never forgets that the way to the Resurrection passes through the Cross. Orthodox spirituality does not recognize the utopianism of a Resurrection without Crucifixion, nor the pessimism of the Cross without the Resurrection. For this reason, in the Orthodox experience, evil does not have the final word in history, while faith in the Resurrection serves as the motivation for the struggle against the presence of evil and its consequences in the world, acting as a powerful transformative force. In the Orthodox self-consciousness, there is no place for surrender to evil or for indifference toward the development of human affairs. On the contrary, its contribution to the transformation of history has theological basis and existential grounding and it unfolds without running the risk of identifying the Church with the world. The Orthodox believer is conscious of the antithesis between worldly reality and eschatological perfection. And so he or she cannot remain idle before any negative dimensions of the world. For this reason, the Orthodox Church has never considered the struggle for transforming the world as a meaningless matter. Our faith in the Resurrection has preserved the Church both from introversion and indifference for the world, as well as from secularization.

For us Orthodox, the entire mystery and existential treasure of our piety is condensed into Pascha. When we hear that the Myrrh-bearers “were astonished” upon “entering the tomb and seeing a young man dressed in bright clothes” (Mark 16.5), this characterizes the vastness and essence of our experience of faith as the experience of existential wonder. When we hear that “they were astonished,” this means that we find ourselves before a mystery that becomes deeper the more we approach it, in accordance with what has been said, that our faith “is not a journey from mystery to knowledge, but from knowledge to mystery.”

While the denial of mystery existentially reduces human nature, the respect of mystery opens to us the gates of heaven. Faith in the Resurrection is the deepest and clearest expression of our freedom; or rather, it is the birth of freedom as a voluntary acceptance of the supreme divine gift, namely of deification by grace. As “experienced Resurrection,” the Orthodox Church is the space of “authentic freedom” that for the Christian life is the foundation, way, and destiny. The Resurrection of Christ is the good news of freedom, the gift of freedom, and the guarantee of “shared freedom” in the “eternal life” of the Kingdom of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

With these sentiments, most precious brothers and beloved children, filled with the complete joy of participating in “the feast that is shared by all,” having received light from the unwaning light and given glory to Christ risen from the dead and brought life to all – even as we remember during this all-festal “chosen and holy day” all of our brothers and sisters in difficult circumstances – we pray to our Lord “who trampled down death by death,” the God of peace, that He might bring peace to the world and guide our steps toward every deed that is good and pleasing to Him, proclaiming the all-joyous hymn “Christ is Risen!”

At the Phanar, Holy Pascha 2024

+ Bartholomew of Constantinople
Fervent supplicant for you all
to the Risen Lord

Archbishop’s Paschal Message 2024

In two lines, Saint Mark the Ascetic encapsulates the history of our salvation, the story of God’s love:

Christ is Master by virtue of His own essence and Master by virtue of His incarnate life. For He creates man from nothing, and through His own Blood redeems him when dead in sin; and to those who believe in Him He has given His grace.

Indeed, the created world and all of humanity were dead in sin because of the original transgression of the first-created. Every generation that followed was trapped in this state of death. Death is the tragedy of being cut off from life — not only in the hour of death when our soul is separated from our body, but, more essentially, death is estrangement from the source of being, that is, a state of separation from God Himself.

Christ, our Lord and God, took it upon Himself to rectify this estrangement, to heal this state of separation. He “came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man,” so that He could walk among us, preach to us, teach us, heal us, and lovingly prepare us for reunion with His heavenly Father. His sacrifice on the Cross saved the world by vanquishing death — not with mighty legions of angels or armies with swords, not by decree or through force, but by humbly receiving unjust blows and enduring mockery, and, finally, through the shedding of His own blood. His sacrifice transformed a terrifying instrument of death into the eternal sign of hope, salvation, and forgiveness. His death set the universe aright because it was impossible for Him who is the Author of life to remain a captive of death. And when He arose, He raised up our nature with Himself, so that through death, we are now liberated from death. Christ not only reunited what had been divided, but also recreated humankind in His Resurrected image and likeness. This mystical Passover changed the course of history and inaugurated a new reality of eternal life. As Saint John Chrysostom writes in his Paschal Catechetical Homily, “For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first fruits of those who sleep.”

So, beloved people of God, the days of fasting have come to an end, and we enter into the joy, splendour, and light of the glorious Resurrection of Christ. The door to salvation is open and all are invited to step forward without fear in their hearts, “Therefore, all of you enter into the joy of our Lord: first and last, enjoy your reward. Rich and poor dance together. Sober and slothful honour the day. Fasters and non-fasters be glad together.” The Resurrected Christ invites all of us into the embrace of His outstretched arms, so that He might speak the promise of His New Covenant into our hearts in a still small voice, “You are forgiven and I offer you eternal life.” The joyful message of our Saviour is extended to every person, and it will take root and bear fruit in the fertile soil of every willing and humble heart, no matter his or her past, no matter his or her life. “Let no one bewail their faults: for forgiveness has risen from the tomb, for this is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

As adopted children of God through the grace of His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, as recipients of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, who seals the members of the Body of the Church with redemption and empowers us to live in faith and goodness, we affirm the good news of the Resurrection, confessing and proclaiming that He is our Lord and our God. And let those who doubt consider the “good disbelief” of Thomas the disciple, whose scepticism was welcomed by our Lord. Christ did not chastise Thomas, but invited him to place his hand on the scars of His wounds. Even those of us who profess the Resurrection, should we have any kind of doubt lurking in our innermost hearts, can expect the same welcoming answer from our Lord, who Himself is gentle and lowly in heart.

Let us now put all else to the side and together proclaim the joyous message — “CHRIST IS RISEN – TRULY – HE IS RISEN”. Let the world know that there is a community, a people, that still believes and confesses the great love of God, Who so loves the world that He gave us His Only Begotten Son, so that we might have eternal life.

With paternal love and blessings in the Risen Lord,

Holy and Great Pascha 2024

✠ Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira
and Great Britain