The Meaning of Pascha
By Patriarch Pavle of Serbia of blessed memory
The Resurrection must be our own Experience
Brothers and sisters, our faith in Christ's resurrection and in the coming universal resurrection is not a delusion It is, on the contrary, our directly experienced spiritual knowledge. We share this knowledge, however, to the extent that we are true Orthodox Christians, which is to say, to the extent that we live in the Church. And To live in the Churchmeans to experience her as the Union of God and man, the Assembly of the Saints, the People of God, and not as an ideology or, still less, a religion.
The Experience must begin Now
Already here and now, through ou own incorporation into the Body of the Church in Holy Baptism, we can taste the final resurrection through our personal participation in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ (see Romans 6:3-5). In the same way our whole Christian life and effort, through taking part in the sufferings of Christ, can make it possible for us to also take part in advance in the future resurrection of the dead. (see Philippians 3:10-11)
Pascha & the Eucharist
We experience the high-point of this participation and the fullness of this foretaste in the Holy Liturgy of the Church, in our eucharistic union with Christ our risen Lord in Holy Communion. We are united with this Lord Who came into the world among us, to us, and in us through the Holy Spirit whenever we "gather together in one place" in His name, This union is especially realized when we eat and drink at His Holy Banquet Table of life and love. This is He Who "will come again in glory," and to Whom we ceaselessly and unrestrainedly call with the perfect words of the New Testament Scriptures: "Come, Lord Jesus!" (Rev. 22:20) The Body and Blood of Christ, the Bread of Life and the Drink of Immortality, our true Food and Drink, is the pledge of the resurrection "on the last day" and of eternal life. (see John 6:32-55) A person is not immortal on his or her own by nature or by the necessity of immortality, but only through Holy Communion in the grace-filled Gifts, which is participation in the Union with the Lifegiver, as the risen Lord Himself teaches us: "As the living Father has sent Me, and as I live by the Father, so whoever eats Me shal l also live through Me." (John 6:57)
We are called to be today's Witnesses
The message of the Cross and Resurrection points us to the indispensable foundation of our life and work, which is our hope amid the hopelessness of an anti-spiritual civilization, and our optimism even under the merciless blows of the so-called new order of things in the world - new in name, but old in its inhumanity. Our experience and our Truth, our value system and our social order, our sincere witness and our embracing of others as brothers and sisters begins today in our gracious Paschal experience going back twenty centuries. This means that it begins in the new life which is found in Christ and in the self-sacrificial accomplishment of the Cross, in the most joyous triumph of the Resurrection, in the unity of the Holy Spirit and in the universal unity of the Church. This new life is most perfectly proclaimed and realized in the communion we all have with Him. During the Easter Canon we pray: "O Christ, great and most holy Pascha,..., grant that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the never-ending day of Thy Kingdom!" Therefore we seek, and we offer to our neighbors, a way out of all troubles and an answer to all their questions and to ours, here and now, from the only true Christ, the Lord of Glory, our Passover, the Lamb of God who suffered and sacrificed Himself for us (see I Cor. 5:7), but Who will triumph and has already triumphed over the seven-headed dragon of the abyss of the Apocalypse, together with all its servants and allies throughout history. (see Revelation 17:7-14)
Pascha and Creation
Here is the answer to one of the most difficult questions of humanity today - to the question of how to care for the world in which we live, how to save our environment and our common human home. In faithfulness to the Cross, we will preserve it by sacrificing ourselves for the world and not sacrificing the world to us; illuminated by the Resurrection and made worthy by our calling to be kings and priests of God's creation, (Rev. 5:10) in the Church we will save and transfigure not only ourselves but also nature, as we come to perceive through faith "the new heaven and new earth." (Rev. 21:1)
