Paschal Epistle to Institute Students and Friends
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
With this joyful proclamation we greet all our students, friends and supporters of the Sts. Cyril & Athanasius Institute for Orthodox Studies. The Lord is risen: the very substance of our life has shown Himself more powerful than sin, more powerful than Hades, more powerful than death itself. He is risen, and our life is begun!
We have come together through the Holy Forty Days as through an exodus in our own lives. Just as God’s chosen people were once called out of the land of slavery, idolatry and darkness, so we too have each been called out of lives that bear these same marks. We, like the inhabitants of ancient Egypt, are slaves — not, perhaps, to civil powers and tyrants, but certainly to our passions, lusts and desires. And we, too, prostrate ourselves too easily, and too often, before idols — not, perhaps, idols of gold or stone, but idols of self-gratification, pleasure, of false ‘truth’. And though darkness does not physically cover our land as it did in the time of the great plague the Lord bestowed upon Egypt, nevertheless a darkness covers our hearts when we allow the light of God’s love to be sullied in us by our sinful behaviour and lack of faith.
Yet into this ‘land of darkness’ God has shown forth a light: the Saviour has come, entered into our decrepit state, and redeemed us. And as we look about ourselves, remembering how our forebears ‘killed the prophets’ and even the Lord of Glory Himself, the angel speaks to us as much as to the holy Myrrh-bearing women: ‘He is not here, for He has risen!’
May all that we do, on this radiant day and on every day, be done in gratitude for this incomprehensible mercy. Let our studies, by which we seek to submit our wills, minds and hearts to the love of God and grow more fully into the life of His Church, be given their breath by the joy we feel in singing, ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death; and upon those in the tombs He has given life!’ Let us seek at every hour, at every moment, to love Him more fully, Who has given us this life!
May the joy of the Lord’s holy Pascha be with your, our students, with your families and loved ones; and also with you, the generous supporters and friends of our small work.
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
INXC,
Archimandrite Irenei
Director