The Fourth Day of Pascha:
Teaching 8
(About the All-Illuminating Light With Which the Resurrection of Christ Illumines Us)
By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko
Teaching 8
(About the All-Illuminating Light With Which the Resurrection of Christ Illumines Us)
By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko
I. With the Resurrection of Christ, both heaven and earth, as well as the underworld, have been filled with light.
a) The heavens themselves were illuminated with a new light; for the highest mystery of God's love was revealed to the holy angels, which did not spare His beloved and only-begotten Son for the salvation of fallen humanity - when the King and Lord of the cherubim and seraphim Himself became incarnate and became human for our salvation, accepted the most cruel sufferings and torments, the cross and death.
b) Even the underworld itself was filled with light when the Conqueror of death and hades appeared there with the light-bearing banner of the Resurrection, when the devil himself saw in Jesus the true Son of God, when all his captives were illuminated by the light of the coming of Christ, resounded with the preaching of the Kingdom of God from the lips of the King of this kingdom Himself, broke the captivity of darkness and error with which the devil had bound them, and emerged from hades as a triumphant host with a song of victory in the wake of their victorious Leader.
c) But the light of the Resurrection of Christ has shone, my brethren, especially on our earth and for us humans.
II. a) What were we before the Resurrection of Christ? Wretched servants, condemned to outer darkness, unpaid debtors, unable to render to the justice of the Master even the smallest farthing, slaves sold under sin, sons of disobedience, walking according to the spirit of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, living dead, corrupted in deceitful lusts, incapable of doing anything but dead deeds. And what have we become, having been resurrected with Christ in the font of Holy Baptism? A royal priesthood, holy nation, people of renewal. Slavery to sin has been changed into the freedom of the children of God, our unpayable debt has been paid, the insoluble bonds that held us captive to the devil have been broken, our conscience has been cleansed, so that we may serve the living and true God.
b) What has become of the earth where Christ has risen? It is no longer a land of damnation, to which man is banished for disobedience. Since the time when Christ washed away its curse with His blood, having become a curse for us, it has become a blessed field, in which the wheat of Christ grows and ripens - His chosen ones, until they are gathered into the heavenly barn. It is no longer an outcast place of exile, containing slaves and bondmen, but a suburb of the heavenly city, in which the sons and heirs of the Kingdom labor and strive in the hope of inheriting the eternal Kingdom of God, prepared for them from the foundation of the world. From the very thorns which sin brings forth on the earth, a crown of glory is woven for those who love the Lord, after the head of the Author of our salvation was wounded with a crown of thorns. The very cup of suffering, so bitter to flesh and blood, becomes the cup of salvation when those who hunger and thirst for righteousness share it with their Savior.
c) What is our grave now? It is no longer a joyless place of decay, in which our God-created beauty becomes stench and food for worms. On the contrary, it is an eternal bed, on which our body, exhausted by the struggle of life, will rest until the joyful morning of the resurrection, until the hour when the unsetting sun of righteousness rises over us. This is God's field, on which the corruptible is sown, that it may rise in incorruption; it is sown without honor, that it may rise in glory; the natural body is sown, that the spiritual body may rise. Thus did our Author of the Contest lie down on His grave, fell asleep in the flesh, and rise from it early in the morning, that it might be for us an image of that resurrection, when those in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard shall come to life, and shall come forth, having done good, to the resurrection of life, and having done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. (John 5:28, 29).
d) What, finally, is the land of our afterlife for us? Before the Resurrection of Christ it was a region unknown to us; a sea that swallowed up without a trace everything that was carried along by the waves of time; an abyss in which both the thought and imagination of man were lost, into which the boldest, most inquisitive minds of the wise and intelligent of this world did not dare to penetrate. Now, when Christ has risen and entered into His glory, it is the kingdom of glory for His chosen ones. At its gates we will lay aside our earthly body, like an old garment, and, having received a heavenly body, we will be illuminated like the sun in the Kingdom of our Father, in the radiance of His saints. The veil that conceals from us the invisible Deity shall be lifted – and we shall behold Him not as now through a mirror and in enigmas, but face to face. The Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world, will appear to us not veiled in mysteries, nor in images and forms, but will manifest in all the radiance of His glory, in all the light of His divine majesty. We shall rejoice at His wedding feast, that eternal Pascha, of which our present Pascha is but a shadow and a foreshadowing, and, being transformed from glory to glory, we shall find in Him both life and immortality, joy and blessedness, and an unending triumph, and eternal Sabbath rest.
III. You see, my brethren, with what an all-illuminating light the Resurrection of Christ illuminates us! "Now everything is filled with light, heaven and earth and the underworld, so that all creation may celebrate the Resurrection of Christ!" Amen.
Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
