VICTORY OVER DEATH

VICTORY OVER DEATH

By Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) of New York (+1985).

words: I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

What righteous, what boundless spiritual power and what infinite love fill these hallowed words! In these words of the Lord men are promised freedom from fear of death and its dominion, the triumph of life over death is promised. And behold! He Who gave these promises has sealed their truth through His own Resurrection from the dead! If, in promising men resurrection and life everlasting, He Himself had remained in the grave, who would have believed His words? But He did arise, and thereby showed that He indeed has within Himself resurrection and life, and furthermore, as almighty Master and Lord, He has the power to bestow this resurrection and life upon the human race which He fashioned.

The Resurrection of Christ is the victory of life over death, the triumph of righteousness over falsehood. And however weak, infirm and sinful a man may be, he cannot but rejoice in this victory. Therein he sees the triumph of a higher justice, the victory of the heavenly law of love over human vanity and error. Only the person who has utterly given himself over to evil and falsehood, like the devil—the father of lies, does not sense the joy of the radiant Resurrection of Christ. And the soul, even if sinful and flawed, if it still has not altogetherextinguished within itself good principles and impulses, joyfully responds to the glorious news of the Resurrection, for it senses how the highest expectations and Christian truths quicken within it...

How splendid, how magnificent is the feast of the Resurrection of Christ. How joyously and solemnly the Church celebrates it! Can any other celebration in the world compare with the magnificence of the paschal service? His Beatitude, Metropolitan Anthony, in agreement with the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church of old, points out that the special and particular joy of Pascha, which the soul of the believer experiences on that radiant night, is, as it were, a foretaste of that everlasting, unfading blessedness spoken of in the final words of the Symbol of Faith: the life of the age to come... Would that all children of the Orthodox Church might enter into that joy that everlasting blessedness, of which the eternal and just Judge will say to His faithful: Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

Orthodox Heritage________________ Page 8_____________ Vol. 18, Issue 03-04