Easter Epistle of the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,
His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy of Kyiv and All Ukraine,
to the Archpastors, Pastors, Monastics and
All Faithful Children of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
Christ is Risen!
With these sacred, ever-living words I cordially greet all of you, God-loving archpastors and pastors, devout monks and nuns, dear brothers and sisters, on the occasion of our greatest Christian Feast – the Most Bright and Most Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ.
‘In that we have beheld the Resurrection of Christ, let us bow down before the Holy Lord Jesus, the only Sinless One’ (a sticheron of Holy Pascha) – the Holy Church addresses us with such words with love, reverentially inviting us to the present Paschal triumph, the triumph of the great victory of God’s Love over human malice.
Love is life, and malice is death, so the Feast of the Most Bright Resurrection of Christ is the great day of the triumph of the victory of life over death. Now, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says, death is destroyed by love.
We are celebrating the present Feast of Holy Pascha, just like the previous one, hearing sounds of gun fires, hearing sounds of mothers’ crying over their killed sons, of wives’ crying over their deceased husbands, of orphaned children’s crying over their dead parents. Unfortunately, Russia is continuing the war against Ukraine.
However, not a single tragedy can sadden the Paschal joy. For God, our Creator and Maker, due to His love to us, sinful, came to the earth, assumed our human nature distorted by sin, assumed all our sins, destroyed them through His wilful sufferings and wilful death on the Cross, and most gloriously rose from the dead as the great Victor. The Most Glorious Resurrection of Christ became the beginning of a new, wonderful and bright era of the being of people on earth.
Our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ destroyed hell and took the power of death away from it by His Most Glorious Resurrection. People who believe in and love Risen Christ, who live according to His holy commandments thenceforth become inaccessible for hell: hell cannot possess them, and the physical death becomes a brief dream for a man, from which every one of us will wake up on the day of the general resurrection, when the Lord will come to earth to administer His righteous Justice.
People who live with Christ and in Christ become filled with marvellous God’s grace, which makes them victors over evil. Such people, even when being in temptations and spiritual struggle, stand firmly and say together with the Apostle: ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ – and humbly thank God, Who has gifted them the victory through Our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15, 55-57).
Some people think that Christ as the Victor over death should protect from earthly temptations and evil those who love Christ and live in Him, so that nothing evil can touch them. But it is not the case. Christianity does not relieve a man from temptations of this world, it gives a man gracious strength for fittingly overcoming them. God’s Grace makes a believing man undefeatable. Our Saviour and Lord said these words in the last days of His salvific ministry: ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’ (John 16, 33). Those words were said to the Holy Apostles, but they pertain not only to the Apostles but also to all followers of Christ, whom we, faithful children of the Holy Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, which covers the entire globe with Christ’s love, consider ourselves to be as well.
Today, the Lord has allowed some sorrows and trials, through which the Lord bestows upon us an opportunity, bestows upon us a chance to become stronger and more spiritually perfect, for the faithful of our Holy Church. Some of us, being aggrieved by the fact that we are suffering injustice, are trying to find a path in life where there would not be contemporary sorrows and trials. Of course, there are such paths, and they can be found, but we should remember that smooth ways lead to hell, and all ways to the Heavenly Kingdom are thorny and narrow (Matt. 7, 13–14). If we want to be true followers of our Risen Lord Jesus Christ, we ought to concern ourselves not with avoiding being said evil things about but with making sure that there is no evil in our souls, that what is said about us is wrong. It is exactly how the Holy Scripture teaches us: ‘Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you […] But let none of you suffer … as an evildoer … Yet if any men suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. […] Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator’ (1 Pet. 4, 12–19).
I once again greet all of you, dear brothers and sisters, on the occasion of the Great Day of the Bright Resurrection of Christ. In these holy days, we offer up humble gratitude to Lord God, Our Maker and Creator, for most wisely and spiritually beautifully accomplishing the feat of our salvation and opening the path to Paradise, to eternal and blessed life, for every person, due to His infinite love to us, fallen people. Today, we rejoice together with the Holy Apostles and the Myrrh-bearing Women, who were the first to receive the news that Christ was Risen! These sacred words sounded for the whole world and changed the world. They sound today as well and call upon us to change ourselves: to cast malice and hatred out of our hearts and fill them with love to God and to each other, to console an orphan and to offer a helping hand to those who need it.
May our Saviour and Lord, Who most gloriously rose from the dead and by His Resurrection on the third day raised up our fallen forefather, raise up and keep in good every one of us and bless our land with peace.
Happy Feast of Holy Pascha, happy Great Day of the Bright Resurrection of Christ!
Indeed, Christ is Risen!
