“The Ressurection, before being an event, is a Person. It is Jesus Christ Himself,” said His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel during the Easter midnight vigil while reflecting on the Saviour’s words: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

“The Jewish Passover remembered the Jewish people crossing the Red Sea, escaping from the slavery of Pharaoh, from the slavery of Egypt, and the journey of this people to a Promised Land,” the Patriarch of Romania explained on Holy Saturday night.

“The Christian Pascha, however, does not refer to the crossing of the Red Sea, but to the passage of Jesus Christ through the blood or suffering of the Cross, and then to the descent into hell with His soul and the resurrection from the dead.”

“In other words, the Christian Pascha means the transition from death to life and from earth to heaven because Jesus Christ, who rises from the dead, does not return to earthly biological life, like Lazarus, his friend in Bethany, but Christ who rose from the dead passes from the life mixed with suffering, pain and death, to the heavenly, eternal, immortal life,” Patriarch Daniel emphasized.

“This is the deep meaning of Holy Pascha or the Christian Easter. That is why St. Paul says: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us”. So, Pascha is, first of all, a Person. Before being a feast, it is a person. It is the divine-human Person of Christ.”

The Resurrection: God’s gift

“We see, therefore, that resurrection is not a natural phenomenon, as in ancient Greek or Roman mythology, where resurrection was considered the return of nature to the state of leaves and flowers in the spring,” His Beatitude noted.

“Resurrection is the exclusive gift of God to all humans, and this gift is offered first in Jesus Christ, His eternal Son, who, out of love for humankind and for our salvation, made Himself exactly what He loved, that is, Man.”

“What was achieved in Christ, through His resurrection from the dead, will be achieved with all humanity, all peoples, all generations from Adam to the end of the world,” His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel stressed.

“All humans will rise in Christ – both those who believed and those who did not believe in Him – because the universal resurrection is God’s gift to all humanity.”

The Universal Resurrection: the goal of the Church and humanity

“However, the Last Judgment will take place after the Universal Resurrection. Those who responded to God’s love during their earthly life will be eternally joyful. Those who freely refused God’s love will feel the spiritual void of refusing God’s merciful love,” the Romanian Patriarch also recalled.

“This Universal Resurrection is the goal towards which the Church and all humanity are heading. This explains why the Orthodox Creed ends with this confession: I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

This “shows that everything is directed to the Resurrection, that our time on earth is a time of preparation, that death is not the last stage of our life because Christ turned it into a Passover, a transition to eternal life.”

Joy is a Person: Jesus Christ

“Therefore, a Christian is always full of hope, full of joy, full of optimism that physical death is only a passing and that the definitive or ultimate future of man is the Kingdom of God – the entry of every person into the joy, peace and glory of the Most Holy Trinity,” Patriarch Daniel added.

Quoting Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, His Beatitude also specified that the Resurrection is “the celebration of light and joy.”
“The Orthodox Paschal hymns, however, tell us that this eternal joy, which the Resurrection of Christ inaugurates, is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, called the Eternal Joy. So, again, before being a state of the soul, joy is an eternal Person, it is the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“The source of joy and peace in the Christian’s life is the connection with the crucified and risen Christ. When we no longer have joy in our souls, we must run to Christ. Prayer and partaking of the Holy Mysteries become a source of joy from the joy of Christ, the eternal Joy,” His Beatitude concluded his Easter sermon.

Foto credit: Basilica.ro / Mircea Florescu

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