PASCHAL EPISTLE of His Eminence Gabriel, Archbishop of Montreal & Canada

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ!

CHRIST IS RISEN!

The blessed day of the Resurrection of Christ, the Feast of the Lord’s Pascha, is the most joyous, most solemn of all the feasts bestowed by our Lord upon His Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. We, so to speak, witness with our own eyes how the words of the Paschal stichera, sung in all our churches, become embodied: “It is the Day of the Resurrection, let us shine with the light of the feast, and embrace one another. Let us say ‘brethren’ even unto those who hate us, let us forgive all things at the Resurrection…”
– A Christian is more than just a simple reflection of his external life, says His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), the Abba of our Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, in him there must be, and indeed there is, another, inner life, kindled by the remembrance of Christ rising from the tomb as Conqueror, and proclaiming to the myrrh-bearing women: Rejoice!
The Apostle Paul wrote to the early Christians: “Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35). Let us recall what befell the early Christians and the holy New Martyrs of Russia during the second Russian Time of Troubles. And now, in these days of “wars and rumors of wars” (Matt. 24:6), when God’s holy places face dangers even in the Holy Land itself, in the place where our monasteries in Gethsemane and on the Mount of Olives are; and also when the forces hostile to Christ are raising up – we hope in vain – a persecution against Orthodoxy in the places where Holy Russia was born in holy Baptism, the joy of Christ’s Resurrection does not depart from us; it reigns in every Russian Orthodox heart, both in the Motherland and in the diaspora. In these troubled times we must not forget our monastics in the Holy Land, and should try to support them as much as we can with earnest prayers and generous contributions.
For, as His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony said, we are called to be sons of the Resurrection, and therein lies the heart of our hope. And so let us, too, repeat the marvellous words of the Psalmist proclaimed in the Church of Christ again and again today: “This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 117:24).

Truly He is Risen!

GABRIEL
Archbishop of Montreal and Canada
PASCHA OF THE LORD, 2026.