Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
With the spring comes the annual renewal of the natural world, and with it the annual renewal of hope, but more importantly with spring comes the vernal equinox, the Passover, and a full moon, for which we wait impatiently each year. We wait for that full moon because only with it can we enter into a quiet sadness as Lent fades, and having entered therein we behold, we relive, the Passion of Our Lord. From His glorious raising of Lazarus and His triumphant entry into Jerusalem to the terrible betrayal of Judas and the triple denial of Peter, to Golgotha and the Cross, and to the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, we are spellbound at each step, each and every year.
But what we in truth have on each Holy Saturday is not just hope brought on by the better weather as the seasons change, but certainty in the path to eternal life that was won for us only by Christ’s trampling down death by death in His harrowing of hell. Not just a mere hope, but surety in the reality of life after death, and only through His Holy Resurrection, symbolized by the Light that Never Fails that illuminates the candles that we carry in the annual Cross Procession at midnight. A certainty that comes only from the Holy Pascha of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Feast of Feasts, the Triumph of Triumphs!
With love in the Risen Christ,
Fr. Gregory
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