Letter #22, 2021, Thursday, April 29: Orthodox Easter

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Letter #22, 2021, Thursday, April 29: Orthodox Easter

[2021-04-29]

[Engleză]

Letter #22, 2021, Thursday, April 29: Orthodox Easter

 The Orthodox world celebrates Easter this year on Sunday, May 2, in three days. We wish a blessed, holy Easter to all, and include here below reflections on the meaning and importance of Easter.

 ***

 As the Orthodox Easter draws near, in the light of Christian faith, in the light of the proclamation of the Resurrection, it seems important to make one point, as follows:

 The modern, increasingly popular, ever more accepted "scientific" and "humanistic" vision of human life and it meaning tends to look "beyond" human beings as we are now, beyond Homo sapiens, toward a "better," "improved" type of human being (Homo sapiens 2.0, as it were), to be "created" through the skill of science, through computer programming and the insertion into the human body of computer chips and through genetic engineering, et cetera...

 This vision is sometimes termed "transhumanism," link and link).

 This vision is spurring great efforts to arrive at this "new humanity," all the while tending to neglect, or ignore, or forget the astonishing reality of... Christ's Resurrection on the first Easter Sunday almost 2,000 years ago.

 What occurred that morning?

 Christ on that first Easter morning accomplished a transformation of the human race, if we may understand profoundly what it meant that He rose from the dead.

 Indeed, He accomplished the definitive transformation, drawing mortal humans up into immortality, fallible humans into divinity (the Orthodox refer to this as "theosis," the process by which human being take on the divinity of Christ.

 This is not to belittle or mock or cast aside the many positive, even astonishingly beneficial, results of modern medical and genetic and computer science.

 Yet it is to speak a word of caution.

 It is to appeal to our scientific, medical, political, financial and philosophical elites to recall and keep fixed in their minds some wise words Pope Benedict XVI spoke in differing ways on many occasions, until one might say that they became a key teaching of his pontificate: that humans, in our efforts to create a "new humanity," nevertheless face intrinsic limits that we should not pass... that we should not do everything that we can do... that some things are sacred, and must be kept sacred... to avoid tragedy...

 "I would like to repeat here what I already wrote some time ago," Benedict said in 2006. "Here there is a problem that we cannot get around; no one can dispose of human life. An insurmountable limit to our possibilities of doing and of experimenting must be established. The human being is not a disposable object, but every single individual represents God's presence in the world (cf. J. Ratzinger, God and the World, Ignatius Press, 2002)."

 Benedict spoke these words at a talk he gave in 2006 to participants in a symposium on the theme "Stem Cells: What Future For Therapy?" organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life in the Hall of the Swiss, Castel Gandolfo, Saturday, September 16, 2006, link).

 As the Orthodox Easter again draws near, it seems necessary to insist that a science that experiments on human beings (sometimes taking the lives of human embryos), and seeks to alter the very nature and structure of the human genetic code, and to intertwine that code with one or many computer chips made by men, all in the name of "surpassing the limitations" of the present human species, ought to take into account the fact of the Resurrection — that surpassing fact, that transcendent fact, that divinizing fact.

 Might not the "surpassing" these scientists are seeking have been, on the ontological level, already accomplished?

 By whom?

 By Jesus Christ, the anointed one of God, the Savior of all mankind, when He conquered sin, and in so doing, conquered death itself.

 "Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free. He has destroyed death by enduring death… Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of the dead." —Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom (c. 343-407 A.D.; he was about 63 when he died). The Orthodox Easter is celebrated on this coming Sunday, May 2. St. John Chrysostom's Paschal Homily is read aloud at Paschal matins, the service that begins Easter, in Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches. According to the tradition of the Church, no one sits during the reading of the Paschal homily. 

 "Christ is the Head of the Church, that is to say, of the new humanity in whose heart no sin, no adverse power, can henceforth finally separate man from grace. In Christ, a man's life can always begin afresh, however burdened with sin. A man can always surrender his life to Christ, so that He may restore it to him, liberated and whole. And this work of Christ is valid for the entire assemblage of humanity, even beyond the visible limits of the Church." —Vladimir Lossky, the great Russian Orthodox emigrč theologian (1903-1958)

 ***

 Below are two texts for your reflection.

 The first is the homily of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, for this coming Easter.

 The second is a reflection about the meaning of Easter by the great Russian Orthodox emigre theologian Vladimir Lossky, who lived in Paris after leaving Russia in the 1920s.

 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: Christ is our Pascha, the resurrection of all

 (link) 

 Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. Bartholomew writes of Easter: "If the fall comprised the suspension of our journey toward the 'divine likeness,' in the risen Christ the way toward deification through grace is once again opened"

 

 Bartholomew's Easter 2021 Homily

 “As we celebrate Pascha, we confess in Church that the Kingdom of God has been already inaugurated, but not yet fulfilled.” —Patriarch Bartholomew

 “In the light of the Resurrection,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said in his prepared homily to be delivered on Easter Sunday, May 2, “earthly things assume new significance, because they are already transformed and transfigured.” Nothing is simply “given.” Everything lies “in motion toward eschatological perfection,” notes the Ecumenical Patriarch.

 The Ecumenical Patriarch also stresses that “Holy Pascha is not merely a religious feast, albeit the greatest feast for us Orthodox. Every Divine Liturgy, every prayer and supplication of the faithful, every feast and commemoration of Saints and Martyrs, the honor of sacred icons, the 'abundant joy' of Christians (2 Cor. 8.2), every act of sacrificial love and fraternity, the endurance of sorrow, the hope that never disappoints the people of God, is a festival of freedom.”

 The Patriarchal Encyclical for Holy Pascha, May 2, 2021:

+ 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

* * *

 Having completed the soul-profiting Lent and venerated the Lord’s Passion and Cross, behold today we are rendered participants of His glorious Resurrection, radiant through the feast and crying out with ineffable joy the world-saving announcement: “Christ is Risen!”

 All that we believe, all that we love, and all that we hope as Orthodox Christians is associated with Pascha, from which everything derives its vividness, through which everything is interpreted, and in which everything acquires its true meaning.

 The Resurrection of Christ is the response of the Divine love to the anguish and expectation of man, but also to the “yearning” of creation that groans with us.

 In the Resurrection, the meaning of “let us make man in our image and likeness”[1] and of “God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good”[2] has been revealed.

 Christ is “our Pascha,”[3] “the resurrection of all.”

 If the fall comprised the suspension of our journey toward the “divine likeness,” in the risen Christ the way toward deification through grace is once again opened for “the beloved of God.”

 The “great miracle” is performed, which heals the “great wound,” mankind.

 In the emblematic icon of the Resurrection at the Chora Monastery, we behold the Lord of glory, who descended “to the depths of Hades” and conquered the power of death, to arise as life-giver from the tomb, raising with Himself the forefathers of humankind and in them the entire human race from beginning to end, as our liberator from the slavery of the enemy.

 In the Resurrection, the life in Christ is revealed as liberation and freedom.

 For “Christ has set us free … for freedom.”[4]

 The content, the “ethos” of such freedom, which must be experienced here in a manner befitting to Christ, before it is perfected in the heavenly kingdom, is love, the experiential quintessence of the “new creation.”

 “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another”[5].

 The freedom of a believer, grounded on the Cross and Resurrection of the Savior, is a journey upward and toward our neighbor; it is “faith working through love” [6].

 It is an exodus from the “Egypt of slavery” and of the diverse alienations, the Christ-given transcendence of an introverted and shriveled existence, the hope of eternity that renders man human.

 As we celebrate Pascha, we confess in Church that the Kingdom of God “has been already inaugurated, but not yet fulfilled.”[7]

 In the light of the Resurrection, earthly things assume new significance, because they are already transformed and transfigured.

 Nothing is simply “given.”

 Everything lies in motion toward eschatological perfection.

 This “unrestrained rush” toward the Kingdom, which is especially lived out in the eucharistic assembly, safeguards God’s people, on the one hand from indifference toward history and the presence of evil in it, and on the other hand from forgetfulness of the Lord’s words, that “my kingdom is not of this world,”[8] which marks the difference between the “already” and the “not yet” of the coming of the Kingdom, in accordance with the most theological expression that “The King has come, the Lord Jesus, and His Kingdom is to come.”[9]

 The chief characteristic of this God-given freedom of the believer is the unrelenting resurrectional pulse, this freedom’s vigilance, and dynamism.

 Its character as a gift of grace not only does not restrict, but in fact manifests our own consent to this gift, and strengthens our journey and our conduct into this new freedom, which also contains the restoration of our estranged relationship with creation.

 One who is free in Christ is not trapped in the “earthly absolutes” like “the rest, who do not have hope.”[10]

 Our hope is Christ, the existence fulfilled in Christ, the brilliance and resplendence of eternity.

 The biological boundaries of life do not define its truth.

 Death is not the end of our existence.

 “Let none fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He was held prisoner by it and has annihilated it. The one who descended into hell, He made hell captive.”[11]

 Freedom in Christ is the “other creation”[12] of man, a foretaste and model of the fulfillment and fullness of the Divine Economy in the “now and always” of the last day, when the “blessed of the Father” will live person to person with Christ, “seeing Him and seen by Him, as they enjoy the fruits of the endless delight that comes from Him.”[13]

 Holy Pascha is not merely a religious feast, albeit the greatest feast for us Orthodox.

 Every Divine Liturgy, every prayer and supplication of the faithful, every feast and commemoration of Saints and Martyrs, the honor of sacred icons, the “abundant joy” of Christians (2 Cor. 8.2), every act of sacrificial love and fraternity, the endurance of sorrow, the hope that never disappoints the people of God, is a festival of freedom.

 All of these radiate the paschal light and exude the fragrance of the Resurrection.

 In this spirit, then, as we glorify the Savior of the world, who trampled down death by death, we convey to all of you – our most honorable Brothers throughout the Lord’s Dominion and our dearly beloved children of the Mother Church – a festal greeting, as, with one voice and one heart, we joyously bless with you Christ unto the ages.

At the Phanar, Holy Pascha 2021

+ Bartholomew of Constantinople

Fervent supplicant for you all

to the Risen Lord.

[1] Gen. 1.26.

[2] Gen. 1.31.

[3] 1 Cor. 5.7.

[4] Gal. 5.1.

[5] Gal. 5.13.

[6] Gal. 5.6.

[7] Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, Belmont MA: Nordland Publishing, 1972, 36.

[8] John 18.36.

[9] Florovsky, op. cit., 72.

[10] 1 Thess. 4.13.

[11] From the Catechetical Homily of St. John Chrysostom on the holy and glorious Resurrection.

[12] Gregory the Theologian, Ethical Poems 61.

[13] John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, IV. 27.

 [End, homily for this coming Easter Sunday, May 2, 2021, by Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.] 

 Below, a reflection on the meaning of Christ's Resurrection of Christ by the Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky

 The Resurrection

 Excerpt from Vladimir N. Lossky's book Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, translated by Ian and Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson).

 By Vladimir Lossky

 The Father accepts the Son's sacrifice "by economy" ("po domostroitelstvu"): "man had to be sanctified by God's humanity" (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45, On the Holy Pascha).

 Kenosis [God's self-limitation, His Divine condescension, especially in taking on human nature in Christ - Ed.] culminates and ends with Christ's death, to sanctify the entire human condition, including death.

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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