Pascha, 2001

To the Reverend Clergy, Monastics, Parish Councils, Philoptochos Societies, Choirs, Youth Organizations, and All the Faithful of the Diocese of San Francisco:

Yesterday I was buried with you O Christ, today I rise with you as you arise. Yesterday I was crucified with you; glorify me with you, Savior, in your Kingdom.

(From the Third Ode of the Paschal Canon)

My Beloved Children in the Lord,

On Holy Friday, we saw the Lord Jesus as the bruised and battered Bridegroom, disfigured in the image of the sin-scarred world. Today, we see him in splendor, “the fairest of the sons of men” (Ps. 45:2), who transfigures all creation into the likeness of His beauty. On Holy Friday, we saw Him as the rejected and crucified king, crowned with the thorns reaped from Adam’s sin. Today, we see Him as the triumphant King of Glory, conqueror of death, with the laurel crown of victory on His brow. On Holy Friday, we heard Pilate’s voice crying, “Behold the Man!” the Man of Sorrows (Is. 53:3) in whose wounded countenance is reflected the face of suffering humanity. Today, we are summoned once again to “Behold the Man!” to behold in the face of Christ our humanity as God intended it, liberated from the realm of death and sorrow and transported into the kingdom of abundant and everlasting life.

In the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, we witness the mystery of the divine kenosis, the self-emptying of the Son of God. In his great “Hymn to Christ” in the Epistle to the Philippians, St. Paul states that Christ did not regard his inherent equality with God the Father as something to be grasped or exploited, but rather “emptied Himself” (ejkevnwsen eJautovn), taking on the form of a slave and submitting himself to the most shameful death imaginable, “the death of the Cross” (Phil 2:5-8). Yet, paradoxically, this kenosis of the Son, which is described in terms of servitude and degradation, constitutes the supreme revelation of freedom and dignity, inasmuch as it is the supreme expression of love. There is no necessity or compulsion in the kenosis of the Son, only the free obedience of love. And thus, in this act of self-emptying the deepest disgrace is transformed into the greatest glory, for God has “highly exalted him, and given Him the Name that is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:9-11).

In this kenosis of Christ there lies hidden a deep truth of the spiritual life: in the Kingdom of God, true dignity is found only in humility, and true freedom only in the obedience of love. When we grasp and exploit, seizing power and vaunting ourselves over our brothers and sisters, we betray our true identity and become again the crucifiers of Christ. It is in making ourselves least in the service of others that we recover our rightful dignity, in obedience that we realize our most authentic freedom, in dying to our false and distorted selves that we rise again to true and everlasting life. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it” (Mt. 16:25). My beloved children, as we celebrate tonight this “Pascha of delight,” we must remember that the miracle of the Resurrection begins with the mystery of the Cross. Let us therefore die to every form of egoism and self-centeredness, so that we may rise with Christ into new and abundant life. Let us offer ourselves in love and service to God and to one another after the pattern of Christ’s supreme self-offering. Let us, in the words of the great doxastikon of Pascha, say even to those who hate us, ‘we forgive all things in the Resurrection.’ And thus may we proclaim to the world:

CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD
TRAMPLING DEATH BY DEATH
AND BESTOWING LIFE TO THOSE IN THE TOMBS!

Paternally,