His Eminence Metropolitan Anthony Bloom (1914 – August 4, 2003) was bishop of the Diocese of Sourozh, the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland. He wrote masterfully about Christian prayer, and many Orthodox Christians in Great Britain and throughout the world consider him to be a saint.

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

How tragic today’s story of the life of Christ is. A man had been paralysed for years. He had lain at a short distance from healing, but he himself had no strength to merge into the waters of ablution. And no one – no one in the course of all these years – had had compassion on him.

The ones rushed to be the first in order to be healed. Others who were attached to them by love, by friendship, helped them to be healed. But no one cast a glance at this man, who for years had longed for healing and was not in himself able to find strength to become whole.

If only one person had been there, if only one heart had responded with compassion, this man might have been whole years and years earlier. As no one, not one person, had compassion on him, all that was left to him – and I say all that was left to him with a sense of horror – was the direct intervention of God.

We are surrounded by people who are in need. It is not only people who are physically paralysed who need help.

There are so many people who are paralysed in themselves, and need to meet someone who would help them.

Paralysed in themselves are those who are terrified of life, because life has been an object of terror for them since they were born: insensitive parents, heartless, brutal surroundings. How many are those who hoped, when they were still small, that there would be something for them in life. But no. There wasn’t. There was no compassion. There was no friendliness. There was nothing. And when they tried to receive comfort and support, they did not receive it. Whenever they thought they could do something they were told, ‘Don’t try. Don’t you understand that you are incapable of this?’ And they felt lower and lower.

How many were unable to fulfill their lives because they were physically ill, and not sufficiently strong… But did they find someone to give them a supporting hand? Did they find anyone who felt so deeply for them and about them that they went out of their way to help? And how many those who are terrified of life, lived in circumstances of fear, of violence, of brutality… But all this could not have taken them if there had been someone who have stood by them and not abandoned them.

So we are surrounded, all of us, by people who are in the situation of this paralytic man. If we think of ourselves we will see that many of us are paralysed, incapable of fulfilling all their aspirations; incapable of being what they longed for, incapable of serving others the way their heart speaks; incapable of doing anything they longed for because fear, brokenness has come into them.

And all of us, all of us were responsible for each of them. We are responsible, mutually, for one another; because when we look right and left at the people who stand by us, what do we know about them? Do we know how broken they are? How much pain there is in their hearts? How much agony there has been in their lives? How many broken hopes, how much fear and rejection and contempt that has made them contemptuous of themselves and unable even to respect themselves – not to speak of having the courage of making a move towards wholeness, that wholeness of which the Gospel speaks in this passage and in so many other places?

Let us reflect on this. Let us look at each other and ask ourselves, ‘How much frailty is there in him or her? How much pain has accumulated in his or her heart? How much fear of life – but life expressed by my neighbour, the people whom I should be able to count for life – has come in to my existence?

Let us look at one another with understanding, with attention. Christ is there. He can heal; yes. But we will be answerable for each other, because there are so many ways in which we should be the eyes of Christ who sees the needs, the ears of Christ who hears the cry, the hands of Christ who supports and heals or makes it possible for the person to be healed.

Let us look at this parable of the paralytic with new eyes; not thinking of this poor man two thousand years ago who was so lucky that Christ happened to be near him and in the end did what every neighbour should have done. Let us look at each other and have compassion, active compassion; insight; love if we can.

And then this parable will not have been spoken or this event will not have been related to us in vain. Amen.

~Taken from Father John A. Peck, The Preachers Institute, http://preachersinstitute.com/2010/04/21/sermon-on-the-sunday-of-the-paralytic-by-metropolitan-anthony-bloom/.

Sentenced to Immortality (Part III)

One need not be surprised that Christians also die bodily. This is because the death of the body is sowing. The mortal body is sown, says the Apostle Paul, and it grows, and is raised in an immortal body (I Corinthians 15:42-44). The body dissolves, like a sown seed, that the Holy Spirit may quicken and perfect it. If the Lord Christ had not been risen in body, what use would it have for Him? He would not have saved the entire man. If His body did not rise, then why was He incarnate?

Why did He take on Himself flesh, if He gave it nothing of His Divinity?

If Christ is not risen, then why believe in Him? To be honest, I would never have believed in Him had He not risen and had not therefore vanquished death. Our greatest enemy was killed and we were given immortality. Without this, our world is a noisy display of revolting stupidity and despair, for neither in Heaven nor under Heaven is there a greater stupidity than this world without the Resurrection; and there is not a greater despair than this life without immortality. There is no being in a single world more miserable than man who does not believe in the resurrection of the dead. It would have been better for such a man never to have been born.

In our human world, death is the greatest torment and inhumane horror. Freedom from this torment and horror is salvation. Such a salvation was given the race of man by the Vanquisher of death – the Risen God-Man. He related to us all the mystery of salvation by His Resurrection. To be saved means to assure our body and soul of immortality and life eternal. How do we attain this? By no other way than by a theanthropic life, a new life, a life in the Risen Lord, in and by the Lord’s Resurrection.

For us Christians, our life on earth is a school in which we learn how to assure ourselves of resurrection and life eternal. For what use is this life if we cannot acquire by it life eternal? But, in order to be resurrected with the Lord Christ, man must first suffer with Him, and live His life as his own. If he does this, then on Pascha he can say with Saint Gregory the Theologian:

“Yesterday I was crucified with Him, today I live with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him, today I rise with Him” (Troparion 2, Ode 3, Matins, Pascha).

Christ’s Four Gospels are summed up in only four words. They are:

“Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!”

In each of these words is a Gospel, and in the Four Gospels is all the meaning of all God’s world, visible and invisible. When all knowledge and all the thoughts of men are concentrated in the cry of the Paschal salutation, “Christ is Risen!”, then immortal joy embraces all beings and in joy responds: “Indeed He is risen!”

~Taken from the Preacher’s Institute, A Paschal Homily, by Blessed Justin Popovich: Sentenced to Immortality, http://preachersinstitute.com/2010/04/12/a-paschal-homily-of-blessed-justin-of-chelije/.

One has to distinguish most carefully between the healing of nature and the healing of the will. Nature is healed and restored with a certain compulsion, by the mighty power of God’s omnipotent and invincible grace. One may even say, by some “violence of grace.” The wholeness is in a way forced upon human nature. For in Christ all human nature (the “seed of Adam”) is fully and completely cured from unwholeness and mortality.

This restoration will be actualized and revealed to its full extent in the General Resurrection, the resurrection of all, both of the righteous and of the wicked. No one, so far as nature is concerned, can escape Christ’s kingly rule, can alienate himself from the invincible power of the resurrection.

But the will of man cannot be cured in the same invincible manner; for the whole meaning of the healing of the will is in its free conversion. The will of man must turn itself to God; there must be a free and spontaneous response of love and adoration. The will of man can be healed only in freedom, in the “mystery of freedom.” Only by this spontaneous and free effort does man enter into that new and eternal life which is revealed in Christ Jesus. A spiritual regeneration can be wrought only in perfect freedom, in an obedience of love, by a self-consecration and self-dedication to God.

This distinction was stressed with great insistence in the remarkable treatise by Nicolas Cabasilas on The Life in Christ. Resurrection is a “rectification of nature” (ή άνάστασις φύσεως έστιν έπανόρθωσις) and this God grants freely. But the Kingdom of Heaven, and the beatific vision, and union with Christ, presume the desire (τρυψή έστιν της θελήσεως), and therefore are available only for those who have longed for them, and loved, and desired.

Immortality will be given to all, just as all can enjoy the Divine providence. It does not depend upon our will whether we shall rise after death or not, just as it is not by our will that we are born. Christ’s death and resurrection brings immortality and incorruption to all in the same manner, because all have the same nature as the Man Christ Jesus. But nobody can be compelled to desire. Thus Resurrection is a gift common to all, but blessedness will be given only to some.

And again, the path of life is the path of renunciation, of mortification, of self-sacrifice and self-oblation. One has to die to oneself in order to live in Christ. Each one must personally and freely associate himself with Christ, the Lord, the Savior, and the Redeemer, in the confession of faith, in the choice of love, in the mystical oath of allegiance. Each one has to renounce himself, to “lose his soul” for Christ’s sake, to take up his cross, and to follow after Him.

The Christian struggle is the “following” after Christ, following the path of His Passion and Cross, even unto death, but first of all, following in love. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren… Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (7 John 3:16; 4:10).

He who does not die with Christ cannot live with Him. “Unless of our own free choice we accept to die unto His passion, His life is not in us,” says St. Ignatius. This is no mere ascetical or moral rule, not merely a discipline. This is the ontological law of spiritual existence, even the law of life itself.

~Adapted from Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption

Emperor and Equal to the Apostles, St. Constantine the Great (early 4th century) was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, establishing a policy of religious toleration that paved the way for the freer expansion of the Church. This text is taken from his great oration ‘To the Assembly of the Saints’ – an extensive examination of several Christian topics. That presented here is the opening chapter, dealing with the life-creating Resurrection of the Lord.

To the Assembly of the Saints

That light which far outshines the day and sun, first pledge of resurrection, and renovation of bodies long since dissolved, the divine token of promise, the path which leads to everlasting life — in a word, the day of the Passion — is arrived, best beloved doctors; and ye, my friends who are assembled here, ye blessed multitudes who worship Him who is the author of all worship and praise Him continually with heart and voice, according to the precepts of His holy word.

But thou, Nature, parent of all things: what blessing like to this hast thou ever accomplished for mankind? Nay rather, what is in any sense thy workmanship, since He who formed the universe is Himself the author of thy being? For it is He who has arrayed thee in thy beauty; and the beauty of Nature is life according to Nature’s laws.

But principles quite opposed to Nature have mightily prevailed, in that men have agreed in withholding His rightful worship from the Lord of all, believing that the order of the universe depended, not on His providence, but on the blind uncertainty of chance.

And this they did, notwithstanding the clearest announcement of the truth by His inspired prophets, whose words should have claimed belief, but were in every way resisted by that impious wickedness which hates the light of truth and loves the obscure mazes of darkness.

Nor was this error unaccompanied by violence and cruelty, especially in that the will of princes encouraged the blind impetuosity of the multitude, or rather itself led the way in the career of reckless folly.

Such principles as these, confirmed by the practice of many generations, became the source of terrible evils in those early times: but no sooner had the radiance of the Saviour’s presence appeared, than justice took the place of wrong, a calm succeeded the confusion of the storm, and the predictions of the prophets were all fulfilled.

For after He had enlightened the world by the glorious discretion and purity of His character, and had ascended to the mansions of His Father’s house, He founded His Church on earth, as a holy temple of virtue, an immortal, imperishable temple, wherein the worship due to the Supreme Father and to Himself should be piously performed.

~Taken from Fr. John A. Peck, The Preachers Institute, Oration on the Pascha of Christ, by St. Constantine the Great, http://preachersinstitute.com/2010/04/12/oration-on-the-pascha-of-christ/.

Sentenced to Immortality (Part II)

The entire history of Christianity is nothing other than the history of a unique miracle, namely, the Resurrection of Christ, which is unbrokenly threaded through the hearts of Christians form one day to the next, from year to year, across the centuries, until the Dread Judgment.

Man is born, in fact, not when his mother bring him into the world, but when he comes to believe in the Risen Christ, for then he is born to life eternal, whereas a mother bears children for death, for the grave. The Resurrection of Christ is the mother of us all, all Christians, the mother of immortals. By faith in the Resurrection, man is born anew, born for eternity. “That is impossible!” says the skeptic. But you listen to what the Risen God-Man says:

 “All things are possible to him that believeth!” (Mark 9:23)

The believer is he who lives, with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his being, according to the Gospel of the Risen Lord Jesus.

Faith is our victory, by which we conquer death; faith in the Risen Lord Jesus. Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. The Lord “has removed the sting of death.” Death is a serpent; sin is its fangs. By sin, death puts its poison into the soul and into the body of man. The more sins a man has, the more bites, through which death puts its poison in him.

When a wasp stings a man, he uses all his strength to remove the sting. But when sin wounds him, this sting of death, what should be done? One must call upon the Risen Lord Jesus in faith and prayer, that He may remove the sting of death from the soul. He, in His great loving-kindness, will do this, for He is overflowing with mercy and love. When many wasps attack a man’s body and wound it with many stings, that man is poisoned and dies. The same happens with a man’s soul, when many sins wound it with their stings: it is poisoned and dies a death with no resurrection.

Conquering sin in himself through Christ, man overcomes death. If you have lived the day without vanquishing a single sin of yours, know that you have become deadened. Vanquish one, two, or three of your sins, and behold: you have become younger than the youth which does not age, young in immortality and eternity. Never forget that to believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Christ means to carry out a continuous fight with sins, with evil, with death.

If a man fights with sins and passions, this demonstrates that he indeed believes in the Risen Lord; if the fights with them, he fights for life eternal. If he does not fight, his faith is in vain. If man’s faith is not a fight for immortality and eternity, than tell me, what is it?

If faith in Christ does not bring us to resurrection and life eternal, than what use is it to us? If Christ is not risen, that meant that neither sin nor death has been vanquished, than why believe in Christ?

For the one who by faith in the Risen Lord fights with each of his sins there will be affirmed in him gradually the feeling that Christ is indeed risen, has indeed vanquished the sting of sin, has indeed vanquished death on all the fronts of combat. Sin gradually diminishes the soul in man, driving it into death, transforming it from immortality to mortality, from incorruption to corruption. The more the sins, the more the mortal man. If man does not feel immortality in himself, know that he is in sins, in bad thoughts, in languid feelings. Christianity is an appeal: Fight with death until the last breath, fight until a final victory has been reached. Every sin is a desertion; every passion is a retreat; every vice is a defeat.

~Taken from the Preacher’s Institute, A Paschal Homily, by Blessed Justin Popovich: Sentenced to Immortality, http://preachersinstitute.com/2010/04/12/a-paschal-homily-of-blessed-justin-of-chelije/.

On the eve of the Sunday of the Holy Myrrh-bearing Women, the Matins service includes Christ’s resurrection appearances as they are recounted at the close of St Mark’s Gospel. If Biblical scholars are correct, these last verses, Mark 16:9-20, did not originally belong to the Gospel narrative. This series of appearances of the risen Lord was apparently gathered together by the early Church for catechetical purposes and was only subsequently added to the second Gospel to provide it with what seemed to be a more appropriate conclusion.

This means that the original Gospel, as St Mark composed it, in fact ended with the passage read at the Sunday morning Liturgy (Mk 15:42-16:8). The Myrrh-bearing Women, having beheld the empty shroud and heard the angelic testimony, were filled with trembling and astonishment—tromos kai ekstasis, more precisely rendered “ecstatic wonder.” It was this intense emotional response that led them to flee the tomb and, for a while, to say nothing to anyone, “for they were afraid.”

Why would the evangelist have ended his narrative in this surprising, almost scandalous way? Especially since we know that the women finally did announce to Peter and the other disciples that they had discovered the tomb to be empty, and that an angel had declared to them that Jesus had risen from the dead? Mark addressed his writing to believers: those who were thoroughly familiar with the entire Gospel story, persons whose very life and faith was grounded in the truth and hope of the Resurrection. Why, then, should he conclude his work with the mysterious image of the tomb, together with the women’s reaction, rather than depict, as the other evangelists did, the various appearances of the risen Lord to His disciples?

The only plausible answer is that St Mark wanted to stress above all this reaction—this intense inner response—of the women to the vision of the tomb and the evidence of the holy shroud. These women had followed Jesus faithfully throughout the time of His earthly ministry, caring for His needs, providing food and lodging for Him and His disciples as they made their pilgrimage from Galilee through Judea and into the holy city of Jerusalem. They remained faithful to him throughout his Passion, and they assisted in His burial. Then, as the Sabbath drew near, they had to leave the burial ritual uncompleted and return to their homes. That ritual could only be finished after the Sabbath, early on the following Sunday morning.

Very early on that first day of the week, the women gathered aromatic spices and walked to the tomb. Finding the stone rolled away, they entered with trepidation. There they beheld a young man, and angelic figure, seated where the body of Jesus had been laid, where now there was only an empty shroud. Then, filled with trembling and astonishment, with “ecstatic wonder,” they fled from the tomb, struck dumb by the vision that had just been granted to them. For the moment they could say nothing to anyone, “for they were afraid.”

This fear experienced by the Myrrh-bearing Women was not abject terror, a kind of dread before something threatening and indecipherable. Rather, it was the experience of awe, so deep and intense that they became “ecstatic,” “beside themselves,” removed from the usual sphere of human experience, and granted the degree of self-transcending wonder that the apostle Paul knew when, in an ecstatic trance, he was “caught up into the third heaven, into Paradise” (2 Cor. 12).

Such is the emotion that accompanies the experience of a theophany, a revelation of divine power and majesty. This is the emotion that seized the women in the empty tomb. They beheld the linen shroud and heard the angel’s assurance that Jesus, who was dead, had been raised to life. They saw, they were amazed, and they left the tomb in a spirit of wonder and awe-filled silence.

As the memory of the paschal celebration fades in the days and weeks following the feast, we are offered in the Myrrh-bearing Women an image—a living icon—of paschal wonder, ecstatic wonder. If we listen attentively to the magnificent hymns of the Pentacostarion, we can hear the angelic announcement they heard and share the wonder that was theirs. In the midst of our ordinariness—shopping, taking the kids to school, fussing with the computer, sitting through office meetings, fighting traffic, or battling anxieties in the middle of the night—in the midst of all of it, that image of the Myrrh-bearing Women extends an invitation. It calls us to step out of ourselves for a while, and with them to enter the tomb where our Lord was laid. It calls us to contemplate the ineffable mystery of the empty shroud, together with the angelic proclamation, “He is not here, He is risen!”

Out of that silent contemplation can come once again the profound sense of awe, of ecstatic wonder, that seized the women and all those who beheld the risen Lord. As it did for the apostle Paul, that awe and that wonder can lift us out of our ordinariness, if only for a moment, and give us a glimpse, a blessed foretaste, of Paradise.

~Taken from the Website of the Orthodox Church in America, http://oca.org/reflections/fr.-john-breck/ecstatic-wonder.

St. Paul meant to say that the Resurrection of Christ would become meaningless if it were not a universal accomplishment, if the whole Body were not implicitly “pre-resurrected” with the Head. And faith in Christ itself would lose any sense and become empty and vain; there would be nothing to believe in. “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain” (v. 17). Apart from the hope of the General Resurrection, belief in Christ would be in vain and to no purpose; it would only be vainglory. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept” (7 Cor. 15:20).

And in this lies the victory of life. “It is true, we still die as before,” says St. John Chrysostom, “but we do not remain in death; and this is not to die… The power and very reality of death is just this, that a dead man has no possibility of returning to life… But if after death he is to be quickened and moreover to be given a better life, then this is no longer death, but a falling asleep.”

The same conception is found in St. Athanasius. The “condemnation of death” is abolished. “Corruption ceasing and being put away by the grace of Resurrection, we are henceforth dissolved for a time only, according to our bodies’ mortal nature; like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish, but sown in the earth we shall rise again, death being brought to nought by the grace of the Savior.”

This was a healing and a renewing of nature, and therefore there is here a certain compulsion; all will rise, and all will be restored to the fullness of their natural being, yet transformed. From henceforth every disembodiment is but temporary. The dark vale of Hades is abolished by the power of the life-giving Cross.

St. Gregory of Nyssa strongly emphasizes the organic interdependence between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The Resurrection is not only a consequence, but a fruit of the death on the Cross. St. Gregory stresses two points especially: the unity of the Divine Hypostasis, in which the soul and body of Christ are linked together even in their mortal separation; and the utter sinlessness of the Lord. And he proceeds:

“When our nature, following its proper course, had even in Him been advanced to the separation of soul and body, He knitted together again the disconnected elements, cementing them together, as it were, with a cement of His Divine power, and recombining what was severed in a union never to be broken. And this is the Resurrection, namely the return, after they have been dissolved, of those elements that have been before linked together, into an indissoluble union through a mutual incorporation; in order that thus the primal grace which invested humanity might be recalled, and we restored to everlasting life, when the vice that had been mixed up with our kind has evaporated through our dissolution… For as the principle of death took its rise in one person and passed on in succession through the whole of human kind, in like manner the principle of the Resurrection extends from one person to the whole of humanity… For when, in that concrete humanity which He had taken to Himself, the soul after the dissolution returned to the body, then this uniting of the several portions passes, as by a new principle, in equal force upon the whole human race. This then is the mystery of God’s plan with regard to His death and His resurrection from the dead.”

In another place St. Gregory explains his meaning by the analogy of the broken reed, cloven in twain. Whoever puts the broken parts together, starting from any one end, then also, of necessity, puts together the other end, “and the whole broken reed is completely rejointed.” Thus then in Christ the union of soul and body, again restored, brings to reunion “the whole human nature, divided by death into two parts,” since the hope of resurrection establishes the connection between the separated parts.

~Adapted from Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption

Sentenced to Immortality (Part I)

Man sentenced God to death; by His Resurrection, He sentenced man to immortality. In return for a beating, He gives an embrace; for abuse, a blessing; for death, immortality. Man never showed so much hate for God as when he crucified Him; and God never showed more love for man than when He arose. Man even wanted to reduce God to a mortal, but God by His Resurrection made man immortal.

The crucified God is Risen and has killed death. Death is no more. Immortality has surrounded man and all the world.

By the Resurrection of the God-Man, human nature has been led irreversibly onto the path of immortality, and has become dreadful to death itself. For before the Resurrection of Christ, death was dreadful to man, but after the Resurrection of Christ, man has become more dreadful to death. When man lives by faith in the Risen God-Man, he lives above death, out of its reach; it is a footstool for his feet:

“O Death, where is thy sting?  O Hades, where is thy victory?” (I Cor. 15:55).

When a man belonging to Christ dies, he simply sets aside his body like clothing, in which he will again be vested on the day of Dread Judgment.

Before the Resurrection of the God-Man, death was the second nature of man: life first, death second. But by His Resurrection, the Lord has changed everything: immortality has become the second nature of man, it has become natural for man; and death – unnatural. As before the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for men to be mortal, so after the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for men to be immortal.

By sin, man became mortal and transient; by the Resurrection of the God-Man, he became immortal and perpetual. In this is the power, the might, the all-mightiness of the Resurrection of Christ. Without it, there would have been no Christianity.

Of all miracles, this is the greatest miracle. All other miracles have it as their source and lead to it. From it grow faith, love, hope, prayer, and love for God. Behold: the fugitive disciples, having run away from Jesus when He died, return to Him because He is risen.

Behold: the Centurion confessed Christ as the Son of God when he saw the Resurrection from the grave. Behold: all the first Christians became Christian because the Lord Jesus is risen, because death was vanquished.

This is what no other faith has; this is what lifts the Lord Christ above all other gods and men; this is what, in the most undoubted manner, shows and demonstrates that Jesus Christ is the One True God and Lord in all the world.

Because of the Resurrection of Christ, because of His victory over death, men have become, continue to become, and will continue becoming Christians.

~Taken from the Preacher’s Institute, A Paschal Homily, by Blessed Justin Popovich: Sentenced to Immortality, http://preachersinstitute.com/2010/04/12/a-paschal-homily-of-blessed-justin-of-chelije/.

“He Himself permitted it. … Death itself in holding Him had pangs as in travail, and was sore bested … and He so rose as never to die.”

He is Life Everlasting, and by the very fact of His death He destroys death. His very descent into Hell, into the realm of death, is the mighty manifestation of Life. By the descent into Hell He quickens death itself. By the Resurrection the powerlessness of death is manifested.

The soul of Christ, separated in death, filled with Divine power, is again united with its body, which remained incorruptible throughout the mortal separation, in which it did not suffer any physical decomposition. In the death of the Lord it is manifest that His most pure body was not susceptible to corruption, that it was free from that mortality into which the original human nature had been involved through sin and Fall.

In the first Adam the inherent potentiality of death by disobedience was disclosed and actualized. In the second Adam the potentiality of immortality by purity and obedience was sublimated and actualized into the impossibility of death. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22).

The whole fabric of human nature in Christ proved to be stable and strong. The disembodiment of the soul was not consummated into a rupture. Even in the common death of man, as St. Gregory of Nyssa pointed out, the separation of soul and body is never absolute; a certain connection is still there. In the death of Christ this connection proved to be not only a “connection of knowledge”; His soul never ceased to be the “vital power” of the body. Thus His death in all its reality, as a true separation and disembodiment, was like a sleep. “Then was man’s death shown to be but a sleep,” as St. John Damascene says.

The reality of death is not yet abolished, but its powerlessness is revealed. The Lord really and truly died. But in His death in an eminent measure the “dynamis of the resurrection” was manifest, which is latent but inherent in every death. To His death the glorious simile of the kernel of wheat can be applied to its full extent. (John 12:24). And in His death the glory of God is manifest. “I have both glorified it and will glorify again” (v.28). In the body of the Incarnate One this interim between death and resurrection is fore-shortened. “It is sown in dishonor: it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness: it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body: it is raised a spiritual body” (7 Cor. 15:43-44). In the death of the Incarnate One this mysterious growth of the seed was accomplished in three days — “triduum mortis.”

“He suffered not the temple of His body to remain long dead, but just having shown it dead by the contact of death, straightway raised it on the third day, and raised with it also the sign of victory over death, that is, the incorruption and impassibility manifested in the body.” In these words St. Athanasius brings forward the victorious and resurrecting character of the death of Christ. 

In this mysterious “triduum mortis,” the body of Our Lord has been transfigured into a body of glory, and has been clothed in power and light. The seed matures. The Lord rises from the dead, as a Bridegroom comes forth from the chamber. This was accomplished by the power of God, as the general resurrection will, in the last day, be accomplished by the power of God. And in the Resurrection, the Incarnation is completed, a victorious manifestation of Life within human nature, a grafting of immortality into the human composition.

~Adapted from Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption

Christ is Risen!

Beloved brothers, so Bright Week has passed and taken with it our deeds to the throne of the Heavenly Master and Judge: there, brothers, there are our deeds now. I say this in order to frighten with the fear of the heavenly judgment those who unworthily, not Christian-like, spent the feast of the bright Resurrection of Christ and to comfort those who spent it with temperance and spiritual joy.

How did very many spend the feast of the bright Resurrection? I would not like to call to remembrance foul human deeds but they, together with those that performed them, need to be remembered and judged on behalf of God. The all-bright feast was met, after the bright Paschal service, with dark deeds: intemperance and drunkenness, fights, cursing, and all types of sin. Consider that we fasted before the feast only in order to, with even more eagerness, rush into all fleshly, sinful deeds so that we can unashamedly and with insolence indulge in every iniquity. Alas! Woe unto us!

All those who met the feast with intemperance and drunkenness, adultery, cursing, and other similar deeds of the flesh lost all the benefit which they had received (if they even received any) from the fast, lost the benefit from repentance and communion of the Holy Mysteries, trampled them as an unreasonable animal under their feet, lost the acceptable time for salvation, given them by the mercy of the Lord, time which will not be returned. It was proper to say to you during the fast, behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Cor. 6:2) for it was just then that you had come to the saving font of repentance and to the all-cleansing, true Mysteries of the body and blood of the Lord. Now your confession and communion is put off until the next fast but who knows if the Lord will vouchsafe you to again confess and commune? Who knows if you will repose in those very iniquities with which again, after the font of repentance, you have defiled yourself? How painful, how piteous, beloved brothers, that so soon you have turned out to be betrayers of Christ and have given yourself over to the devil to serve him, the original murderer, the author of, and instructor in of every type of sin! You are, using the words of the Savior, and I, a great sinner, am as well are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do (John 8:44).

What, then, remains for us to do, beloved brothers? To pray and weep for our sins. To weep that not Christian-like and not even human-like did many of us meet the feast but like vile idol worshipers and like wild animals, which have not been fed for a long time with their favorite food. To weep that we have trampled upon the great, soul-saving Mysteries of Christ, that is, repentance and communion, and counted them as nought. To weep that the time, given for salvation, we have thoughtlessly lost. May we weep and pray to the Lord that He “not become angry with us neither destroy us with our iniquities” (first morning prayer) but would return us to the way of repentance and make us skilled performers of His commandments. Let us firmly decide from now on not to give ourselves over to intemperance and drunkenness and all the sins which follow, and with tears ask the Lord that He, with the Grace of the Holy Spirit, would strengthen us in our intentions and good deeds.

Brothers! May we all shed tears for we all unworthily met the great feast of the Lord and angered our Lord; not in this way, not in this way indeed, should we meet the feasts of the Lord. We need to meet them with spiritual joy in the Lord, for our deliverance from sins and for our eternal salvation through Christ, the Son of God, with deeds of mercy, temperance from passions, visiting the church of God in spirit and truth and with simplicity in food and clothing.

O, you, decorated with gold and a multitude of precious fabrics, women and maids! In the name of the Lord, I direct my speech to you! What a multitude of poor would you have been able to cause to rejoice on the all-bright day of the Resurrection of Christ and, in that way, worthily meet that great feast, if you would have, in generosity and Christian love, changed even a few of these decorations into money and given that money to the poor who are so many in our city? Would it not have been reasonable, in a Christian way, if you had fewer precious clothing and the money remaining you had given to the poor? What rich mercy would you have received on that day from Christ the Lord? Yes, truly Christian-like would you have then met the feast of Christ’s Resurrection. But now what? You are decorated like idols but the members of Christ are without clothes; you are satiated but the members of Christ are in want; you roll in every possible pleasure but those are in tears; we are in rich and decorated dwellings but those are in cramped conditions and uncleanness, in dwellings which are often not any better than a pigsty. We do not have Christian love and, therefore, there is no true feast of the Resurrection of Christ, for those truly celebrate the Resurrection who himself is raised from dead deeds to deeds of virtue and Christian faith and love, trampling on intemperance, luxury, and all of the passions. Brothers! May we celebrate the feasts of the Lord as Christians and not as pagans! Amen.

~Taken from Mystagogy: The Website of John Sandidopoulos, http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/04/homily-for-sunday-of-saint-thomas.html.