2012
Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, is
delivering his traditional Easter address to Orthodox believers.
‘Let hope give you strength’
I address you, dear brothers and sisters,
with this Paschal greeting: Christ is risen!
This greeting, which we have inherited from the
days of holy apostles, proclaims divine truth and asserts a historical fact.
Indeed, 2,000 years have passed, but nobody can say that this greeting is no
longer relevant. It is living and effective, and this alone manifests divine
power and truth.
The greeting that you have just heard and that
you will pass to each other later today contains a great hope, because our Lord
Jesus Christ, being without sin, in other words not having sinned before men or
before God, was crucified, and before that subject to suffering, torture and
humiliation.
How often, when facing suffering, especially
suffering inflicted by other people, we become anxious and desperate. We think
that it is unjust for us to suffer, that we don’t deserve this. We resist
injustice. Believers often say that by being reviled they are bearing their
cross.
So why is apostles’ greeting, ‘Christ is
risen!’, a sign of hope for us? It’s because if Christ, who was without sin,
suffered, we, too, should remember our Lord and Savior when facing injustice,
slander, malice and lies.
Every one of us, even those who suffer
unjustly, has some personal sins, some wrongdoings. This alone means that we
can regard our suffering as a punishment for our wrongdoings.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who had not committed
any wrongdoing and had never lied, accepted reviling from people and even
agreed to be put to death being innocent.
The Lord has taken the way of the cross, and
now He encourages us to follow Him and remember that resurrection follows the
cross.
The Lord has risen from the dead, and this
resurrection is His victory over all those lies.
We believe that as we proclaim, with faith and
hope, that Christ is risen, we too are heirs to everything Christ entrusted to
His apostles, because Easter, the day of Christ’s resurrection, is a day of
great hope, which should strengthen us in our sorrows, help us overcome
hardships, cope with injustice and move forward remembering that Christ
defeated evil, which means that we too should overcome evil in our lives,
through the power of God, the power of prayer and the power of faith.
That is why the holy day of Easter is a
celebration of hope for all people.
I would like to share the joy of this
celebration and the joy of Christian hope with you. Let this hope give you
strength to go through your life, following the great, unfading and shining
image of the risen Christ.
CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!
2013
‘We become free to live a full life’
The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill,
who heads the Russian Orthodox Church, has addressed the faithful with his
traditional Easter speech.
Christ is Risen, dear brothers and sisters!
I would like to share the joy of the holy day
of Easter with all of you. The Lord has indeed saved us all through his resurrection.
And in order to comprehend the significance of this for us as mankind we could
consider this example. Just imagine that someone innocent took the blame,
responsibility and penalty for all the crimes ever committed by all the
wrongdoers and rendered them all free by taking their penalty for them. Our
Lord Jesus Christ did just the same, yet with one condition – he didn’t open
the doors of the prison cells the sinners are contained in, but undid their
locks. And now it is our free choice – to step out and be free or remain locked
up. In one of the hymns, we praise our risen Savior saying that He smashed open
the eternal fetters and chains and freed us of them. But in order for us to
step out of that door and become free we need to make our way towards Him,
because there is only one way that leads to the door beyond which the freedom
lies.
Our circumstances in life, superstitions, all
kinds of stereotypes and false values lead us off this path. We often get
tempted with other ways to freedom. At times people spend their entire lives
pursuing these ways only to find out in the end that they’re still locked up
and instead of obtaining freedom have hit the wall. Some may still have the
time and energy to resume their search for a way out, while others may give up
the hope to escape their imprisonment.
If we turn to Christ, we open the door that He
unlocked for us. We become free and empowered by His ways and commandments. We
become free to live a full life. This doesn’t require any exhausting effort. It
only takes to believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ has risen and saved us. It
only takes to believe that the door is open. It only takes to believe that
living by His will is the true freedom while any other way is the opposite.
And when we begin to realize this, a whole new
life opens to us. We find it easier to be good to people, refrain from foul
words or judgments and make our way through life without hurting other people
or crippling them.
We discover that we are able to love, be
faithful, and carry the truth into the world. That’s what life in Christ means,
that’s what the true freedom is. Maintaining freedom isn’t easy. Each one of us
knows how difficult it is for a state to protect its freedom and independence.
It sometimes takes a lot of hard work. Protecting one’s freedom from numerous
temptations and illusions that the dark powers are sending our way to drive us
off the way to salvation isn’t easy just the same way.
The holy day of Easter is a celebration of
victory and freedom. Let’s embrace this holy day with these feelings and make
the decision, as much as we can, to start making our way towards our risen
Savior through the door that He gracefully opened for us by His holy deeds of
mercy and truth – and we can do so by helping those who need our help,
promoting peace, justice and love among all of us.
Christ is risen indeed! Amen!
2015
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill sends a
message to believers of the Russian Orthodox faith as they celebrate Easter
Sunday:
Beloved in the Lord my brothers the
archpastors, all-honourable fathers, pious monks and nuns, dear brothers and
sisters!
It is with joy that I greet you with the
ancient and yet eternally new and life-affirming victorious exclamation:
CHRIST IS RISEN!
This wondrous resonance of truly life-creating
words contains the foundation of our faith, the gift of hope and the fount of
love.
Just yesterday, together with the Lord’s
disciples, we grieved at the death of our beloved Saviour, while today with the
whole world, both visible and invisible, we sing triumphantly: ‘For Christ has
risen, the everlasting eternal joy!’ (Canon of Holy Pascha). Just yesterday it
would seem that the last hope for salvation had been lost, while today we have
acquired firm expectation of eternal life ‘in the never-fading Kingdom of God.’
Just yesterday the ghost of corruption prevailed over creation, casting doubt
over the meaning of our earthly life, while today we proclaim to each and all
the great victory of Life over death.
The divinely-inspired apostle Paul spoke of the
significance of the miracle that took place on that distant, and yet forever
near to every Christian night; he tells us directly that this event has the
greatest importance for our faith, for ‘if Christ be not risen, then is our
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain’ (1 Cor 15:14). The Lord’s Passover
is the very heart and invincible power of Christianity: as St. Philaret of
Moscow says, it ‘creates hope, ignites love, inspires prayer, calls down grace,
illumines wisdom, destroys all calamities and even death itself, gives vitality
to life, makes bliss not a dream but a reality, glory not a phantom but the
eternal lightning of the eternal light illuminating all things and defeating
nobody’ (Homily on the Day of Holy Pascha, 1826).
Belief in Christ’s Resurrection is inextricably
harnessed to the Church’s belief that the incarnate Son of God, in redeeming
the human race and tearing asunder the fetters of sin and death, has granted to
us genuine spiritual freedom and the joy of being united with our Maker. We are
all in full measure communicants of this precious gift of the Saviour, we who
have gathered on this radiant night in Orthodox churches to ‘enjoy the banquet
of faith,’ as St. John Chrysostom puts it.
Pascha is the culmination of the Saviour’s path
of thorns crowned with suffering and the sacrifice of Golgotha. It is not
fortuitous that in both the writings of the Fathers and liturgical texts Christ
is repeatedly called the ‘First Warrior in the battle for our salvation.’ ‘For
I have given you an example,’ (Jn 13:15), the Lord says to his disciples and
calls upon us all to follow the example of his life.
Yet how are we to imitate the Saviour? What
sort of spiritual heroism can we apply to the realities of modern-day life?
Today, when we utter the word ‘heroism,’ an image often arises in peoples’
minds of a legendary warrior, a historical figure or famous hero from the past.
Yet the meaning of spiritual heroism lies not in the acquisition of resounding
fame or the gain of universal recognition. Through spiritual deeds, immutably
linked to our inner endeavours and the limiting of oneself, we can know by
experience what true and perfect love is, for the willingness to sacrifice
oneself, which lies at the foundation of all spiritual deeds, is the highest
manifestation of this feeling.
The Lord has called us to the feat of active
love embedded in losing oneself in service to our neighbour, and even more so
to those who especially need our support: the suffering, the sick, the lonely
and the downcast. If this law of life, which is so clearly manifested and
expressed in the earthly life of the Saviour, becomes the inheritance of the
majority, then people will be truly happy. Indeed, in serving others, we gain
incomparably more than we give: the Lord then enters our hearts and by
communicating with divine grace all of human life is changed. As there can be
no holiness without labour, as there can be no Resurrection without Golgotha,
so too without spiritual feats the genuine spiritual and moral transformation
of the human person is impossible.
When spiritual heroism becomes the substance
not only of the individual but of an entire people, when in striving for the
celestial world the hearts of millions of people are united, ready to defend
their homeland and vindicate lofty ideals and values, then truly amazing,
wondrous things happen that at times cannot be explained from the perspective
of formal logic. The nation acquires enormous spiritual strength which no
disasters or enemies are capable of overcoming. The truth of these words is
evidently attested by the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, achieved by the
self-sacrificing heroism of our people. We shall mark the seventieth
anniversary of this glorious date in the current year.
In afflictions and temptations we are called
upon to preserve peace and courage, for we have been given the great and
glorious promise of victory over evil. Can we be discouraged and despair? No!
For we comprise the Church of Christ which, according to the Lord’s true word, cannot
be overcome by the ‘gates of hell’ (Mt 16:18), and Divine Revelation bears
witness to us by foretelling that ‘God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away’ (Rev
21:4).
I prayerfully wish you all, Your Graces my
brothers the archpastors, all-honourable fathers, dear brothers and sisters,
strength of spirit and steadfastness in faith, peace and unfailing joy in the
Lord, the Conqueror of death. Imbued by the light of Christ’s Resurrection and
in communing with the mystery of the Paschal miracle, let us share our exultant
joy with those who are close to us and those far from us in testifying to all
of the Saviour who has risen from the tomb.
May we all the days of our life be forever
warmed, comforted and inspired to good deeds by the ardent words of the good
news of Pascha which impart to us the true gift of the joy of life:
CHRIST IS RISEN!
HE IS RISEN INDEED!
I will find the sermons for 2015 and 2016 as well, and post them. I think we need to hear this and meet our brothers and sisters in the east, and not stare at the ceremonial differences, not only want to see the icons as idolatry, or focus on differences only.
SvarSlett