EASTER EPISTLE of His Eminence Gabriel, Archbishop of Montreal & Canada. 2024

EASTER EPISTLE

To the clergy and God-saved flock of the Diocese of Canada

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ!

CHRIST IS RISEN!

With heartfelt joy I greet each one of you on the Radiant Feast of Feasts – the Resurrection of Christ. “The day of Resurrection falls today, let us shine with the light of the Feast and embrace one another, unto those that hate us let us say: O brethren, let us forgive all in the Resurrection, and we shall thus cry aloud: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs He has given life!”

Let us try to remember how many times in all the past years of our earthly life we have heard or repeated this, the last of the Easter stichera, which, remarkably, ends with the troparion of the Feast. In the whole cycle of festal services no other sticheron ends thus. Only the Paschal one.

For many centuries throughout the history of our Motherland, the day of Christ’s Resurrection, this Feast of Feasts, has been celebrated by the triune Russian people with special joy. In every corner of Holy Russia, from the tsar’s palace to the poorest village hut, the Orthodox people everywhere rejoiced in the Resurrection of Christ. Let us not forget, beloved brothers and sisters, that this Paschal joy and blessing are but a foretaste of the everlasting joy that awaits us in the Kingdom of Heaven. “Oh, if only we would ponder more over our inescapable death and resurrection – exclaimed His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony, the Abba of our Russian Orthodox Church Abroad – we would see how quickly the remnants of malice in us would melt away. The joy of Pascha is a foretaste of the eternal joy of Paradise, and whoever is deprived of the former may also be deprived of the latter.”

Today, by the will of God, we see more and more clearly that the spirits of evil have been, and are still trying to do everything in their power to sow, through the people they have enslaved, the internecine strife among us, the inheritors of our common history and culture. As we await the heavenly joy of Easter, the fierce battle of brother against brother rages on the ancient lands of our historical Motherland. The closer we come to the day of the Glorious Resurrection of Christ, the greater the persecution of the Church of Christ: on April 12/25, Metropolitan Arseny of Svyatogorsk, Suffragan Bishop of the Kiev Diocese and Abbot of the famous Svyatogorsk Lavra, was taken into custody. Alas, the Most Reverend Arseny is just one of those archpastors and clergy who are being persecuted in those parts.

So, beloved brothers and sisters, in these days of the Lord’s Pascha let us pray for those who suffer persecution, and beseech the Risen Lord that the joy of Easter and the peace of Christ may shine forth everywhere.

Christ is Risen Indeed!

GABRIEL Archbishop of Montreal and Canada

CHRIST’S PASCHA, 2024.

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