The resurrection of the Lord is a day of triumph, victory, universal joy and gladness. Christ, the light of the world, the life, the truth, has not only conquered, but has crushed darkness, death, sin and confirmed His divinity. Christ is a perfect God, He is God, death no longer has dominion over us either, it has no power over us, it is not a threat to us.
Death, of course, does not mean biological end, irrevocable end of man, final return to non-existence, it is not the final separation from the earth but the loss of paradise. Death means the continuation of existence in a state of eternal damnation in Hades, in the realm of darkness and the absence of God. On the contrary, life and resurrection, ‘existence in heaven and abiding in heaven’ according to Paul, means a true and unchanging participation in the eternal kingdom of God.
On Good Friday we experienced the bodily death of Christ, the ‘testimony’, ‘and so he expired’ (Luke 4-6). But this did not mean His end, but the completion of His sacrificial mission.
On Holy Saturday our Church presents us the descent of the Lord to Hades, the crushing of the dominion of Hades and today the abolition of death; ‘Hades has been destroyed by the power of death’, we sing, ‘he trembles and the bonds are loosed… the state of death is no more’, we sing, the power of death has been abolished. ‘We celebrate the death of death,we celebrate the cleansing of Adam and we praise the cause.’ This does not mean that we do not die physically, since the Lord also died on the cross. It means that since the Lord, by His resurrection, met Adam, i.e. all of Adam’s descendants, the entire human race, and we become partakers of eternal life. The mouth of Hades was transformed into the gate of heaven.
In the magnificent and divinely conceived icon of the Lord’s descent into Hades that circles our temples, we see the Lord, dead but ‘all-powerful’ and ‘full of life’, full of life and strength, breaking through the bars of the kingdom of Hades, doors collapsing, keys, nails and chains scattering disorderly left and right, tombs opening and collapsing, and with a rush He takes the representatives of the human race, the forefathers, Adam and Eve, into His new life, as He raises them from the tombs.
‘Now all things have come to pass’, a new life, the life itself is rising. This is the Resurrection. An end to the invincible condemnation of sin, an end to the absolute dominion of death, the way to the light of true life, the prospect of eternal life is open and offered as a gift of God’s love to all, if only we believe in Christ’s resurrection and wish for our own resurrection.
The resurrection of the Lord is an undeniable, real event, not only because it is mentioned in the gospel narratives and preached through history, but because it is confirmed in our lives. Man could not be resurrected if Christ had not been resurrected, nor could he live a resurrected life in eternity if he did not have a resurrected life in everyday life. He’s writing somewhere: ‘If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.’ In other words, ‘If you live by faith in the resurrection and the prospect of it before you die, you will experience it eternally when you die.’
I wish you, my brothers and sisters, MANY YEARS full of life, bathed in the light of the Risen One, flooded with the joy of the Victor of death and I invite you to always exclaim with our lips and our lives
CHRIST IS RISEN, THE LORD IS RISEN INDEED!
Metropolitan Nicholas of Messogaia and Lavreotiki
