Christ is Risen! Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him (1 Cor. 2:9). We either believe in this, confess this, have experienced this in our lives and try not to forget it, or we return again and again like a dog to our own vomit (cf. Prov. 26:11), to lack of faith, doubt, despondency, despair, fear, and faintheartedness.
Everyone has or will have to pay what’s owed to human weakness, but not forever. The Lord is waiting for us to get stronger in our trust in Him, so that His words, “fear not”, which He so often pronounced in Holy Scripture, would finally produce some fruit. The more we enter into the meaning of this Feast of Feasts and Triumph of Triumphs, the more often and attentively we reread Holy Scripture, the more our faith in the Risen Lord will produce beautiful and saving fruit in our souls.
May the Lord grant that the time of Great Lent, filled with both repentant joy and temptations, and that the time of Bright Pascha and the first week of Pascha, would bring us precisely to this faith, to this hope, that there is no other meaning for us in life than living in order to come to know our Lord Jesus Christ and confirm our faith in Him. We and those we love can only find true life here and eternal life in this.
For those who are still not at home in the Church, I would like to wish that they would feel and see for themselves how beautiful, good, and wondrously bright life is in Christ’s Church; how much goodness there is prepared in it for every person.
