My beloved brothers and sisters in our Risen Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ,
CHRIST IS RISEN! TRULY HE IS RISEN! ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! ΑΛΗΘΩΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ!
The Resurrection of Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ is THE FOUNDATION AND THE CROWN OF OUR ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN FAITH. The Resurrection of Christ is the first, most important, Great Truth, with the proclamation of which the Holy Apostles began their preaching of the Gospel after the Descent of the Holy Spirit, Just as by the death of Christ on the Cross OUR REDEMPTION WAS ACCOMPLISHED, SO BY HIS RESURRECTION ETERNAL LIFE WAS GIVEN TO US. Therefore, the Resurrection of Christ is the object of the Church’s constant Triumph, its unceasing rejoicing, which reaches its summit in the Feast of the Holy Christian Pascha– "Today all creation is glad and rejoices, for Christ has risen!" (Canon of Pascha, Canticle 9).
The saving fruits of the Resurrection of Christ are:
(a) victory over hell and death (b) the blessedness of the Saints in heaven and the beginning of the existence of the Heavenly Church; and (c) the sending down of the Holy Spirit and the creation of the Church of Christ on earth.
A. The Victory over Hell and Death
Human existence after the loss of Paradise has two forms: (a) the earthly, bodily life; and (b) the life after death.
Earthly life ends with the death of the body. The soul preserves its existence after bodily death, but its condition after death, according to the word of God and the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Church, is diverse. Until the coming to earth of the Son of God, and until His Resurrection from the dead, the souls of the dead were in a condition of rejection, being far away fro God, in hell, in the underworld (the Hebrew "Sheol"; Genesis 37:35, Septuagint). To be in hell was like spiritual death, as is expressed in the words of the Old Testament Psalm: "In hades who will confess Thee?" (Psalm 6:5). In hell there were imprisoned also the souls of the Old Testament righteous ones. These righteous ones lived on earth with faith in the coming Savior, as the Holy Apostle Paul explains in the eleventh chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews; and after death they languished in expectation of their redemption and deliverance. Thus it continued until the Resurrection of Christ, until the coming of the New Testament: "And these wall, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promis, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect" (Hebrews 11:39-40). Our deliverance was also their deliverance.
Chris, after His death on the Cross, Descended in His soul and in His Divinity into hell, at the same time that His body remained in the grave. He preached salvation to the captives of hell and brought up from there all the Old Testament righteous ones into the bright mansions of the Kingdom of Heaven. Concerning this raising up of the righteous ones from hell, we read in the Epistle of Saint Peter: "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit; by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison" (1 Peter 3:18-19). And in the same place we read further: "For this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit" (1 Peter 4:6). Saint Paul speaks of the same thing: quoting the verse of the Psalm, "When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men," the Apostle continues: "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things" (Ephesians 4:8-10).
To use the words of Saint John Chrysostom, "Hell was taken captive by the Lord Who descended into it. It was laid waste, it was mocked, it was ut to death, it was overthrown, it was bound" (Homily on Pascha). With the destruction of the bolts of hell–that is, the inescapability of hell–the power of death also was annihilated. First of all, death for righteous men became ONLY A TRANSITION FROM THE WORLD BELOW TO THE WORLD ABOVE, TO A BETTER LIFE, TO LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD, SECONDLY, BODILY DEATH ITSELF BECAME ONLY A TEMPORARY PHENOMENON, FOR BY THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST THE WAY TO THE GENERAL RESURRECTION WAS OPENED TO US. "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). The Resurrection of Christ IS THE PLEDGE OF OUR RESURRECTION: "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 Chirst’s at His coming" (1 Corinthians 15:22-23). After this death will be utterly annihilated. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26). (Resources: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology)
(To be continued)
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"Glory Be To GOD
For
All Things!"
– Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in Our Risen Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+ Father George
The Eastern Orthodox Christian Ethos 