Dear brothers and sisters!
Christ is Risen!
On this radiant night of Pascha, the whole creation rejoices, for the Lord of Glory has shattered the bonds of death. What the first Adam lost through disobedience, the Second Adam our Lord Jesus Christ has restored by His obedience to the Father. By His Resurrection, Christ has not merely revived His Body; He has healed our very nature. Where sin had wounded us, where corruption had made us mortal and captive to the passions, where the devil had held us in the fear of death, there the Risen Christ has entered as a Victor. He took upon Himself our flesh, suffered in it, died in it, and then, by the power of His divinity, raised it incorruptible.
By Adam's transgression our nature got subject to death and corruption, we inherited his fallen nature while The Lord healed our nature by His resurrection and by joining and becoming members of His Body the Church, we partake of His resurrection and become members not of the fallen first Adam but of the Resurrected Christ the second Adam. The Lord descended into Hades not as a victim but as a Victor, He trampled death down by death. Now even though we still die, and our souls separate from our bodies, Christ initiated the process of the ressurection which will take effect at the general resurrection during His Second Coming:
Apostle Paul talks about it:
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that died. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death (1Cor.15:20-26).
But the wonder does not stop at healing. The Risen Christ has opened for us something far greater: the very path to deification. As St Gregory Palamas, the great teacher of the uncreated Light, proclaims: we are called to become gods by grace. Not by nature but by participation in the divine energies that shine forth from the Risen Lord. The same uncreated glory that blazed upon Tabor now pours from the Resurrected Christ. Through the Holy Mysteries, through prayer, through the ascetic struggle illumined by grace, we are invited to partake of that same divine life. The Resurrection is not a distant historical event; it is the present reality in which we are being transfigured. “He became man,” the Fathers say, “that we might become god.” And Palamas adds with precision: we become gods by grace, receiving into ourselves the very energies of the Holy Trinity. This is no metaphor. This is the purpose for which we were created. This is the fruit of Pascha.
Therefore let nothing distract us from Christ and from the eternal life He has bestowed. The world is filled with wars and rumors of wars, with temptations that rage like storms, with sorrows that seek to crush the heart. Pay them no heed. In the Risen Christ we have nothing to fear. He who trampled down death by death has trampled down every principality and power of this age. The principalities of darkness that stir up nations, the passions that war in our members, the anxieties that whisper “What shall we eat? What shall we drink?” ''How shall we live'' all of them are already defeated. They have no ultimate power over those who are in Christ. “I have overcome the world,” Christ says, and in His victory we stand.
Fix your gaze on the empty Tomb. Cling to the feet of the Risen Lord as the Myrrh-bearing women did. Let every thought, every desire, every breath be for Him alone. Here is eternal life: to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Here is joy that no one can take from us. Here is peace that the world cannot give and cannot destroy. Let us walk in the Lord and not be tempted by this sinful world! Let us die to the world to be alive in Christ!
"It is the day of Resurrection; let us be radiant for the festival, and let us embrace one another. Let us say, O brethren, even to those that hate us: Let us forgive all things on the Resurrection; and thus let us cry: Christ is risen from the dead, by death He has trampled down death, and on those in the tombs He has bestowed life." (Doxastikon of Great and Holy Pascha)
To Him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory, honor, and worship, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.
Amen.
Christ is Risen!
Your brother in Christ
Marcus Orthodoxus