From Monachos.net

The Serbian Orthodox Church to her spiritual children at Pascha, 2002

PAVLE By the grace of God Orthodox Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch, with all the Hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church -- to all the clergy, monastics, and all the sons and daughters of our Holy Church: grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, with the joyous Paschal greeting:

CHRIST IS RISEN!

In greeting you, our dear spiritual children, with this Holy Paschal greeting, we pray you receive the most joyous power of the risen God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, by which He has illumined us by rising from the dead and conquering, once and for all, every death and every sorrow. That power of Christ's resurrection continues to live and give life in the Body of Christ, the Church, where the fragrance of the Holy Spirit continuously proclaims the life of the Resurrected One.

Faith in the Resurrection of Christ has always been the cornerstone of the Church. Without that faith it would entirely lose its meaning and its strength. 'For if Christ is not risen,' says the Holy Apostle Paul, 'our faith is in vain'. Without the Resurrection all our preaching is in vain, as well as our knowledge, our joy, our beauty, and our love; in vain is our birth, our life and our death; in vain is everything which is ours, or someone else's, or anyone's; in vain is every wish, and every thought, and every name -- then everything is in vain! If there is no resurrection, then man is the most lamentable creature 'in all the worlds', a slave of 'nature', an object with which nature plays by deceiving him with a little life, just so in the end she can show him to be utterly nothing. If Christ is not risen and has not conquered death, then there is no life -- there remains only absurdity and an unsatisfied hunger for life and love.

The foretaste of eternal life in the Kingdom of the Risen Christ confirms our conviction that standing over all our falls, failures, and incomplete successes, over all the temporary triumphs of death over life that accompany human earthly existence -- standing over all this is the eternal victory of Life over death, Good over evil, Joy over sorrow. Faith in the Resurrection, and the experience of the beauty and joy of life that accompanies this faith, is the most radiant jewel of the human spirit, the priceless treasure deposited in the hidden places of human life. It shines forth with divine power, giving man the strength to constantly love anew and to create for eternity. To deprive man of this treasure would mean to abandon him to senselessness and the darkness of nothingness. To leave a person without faith in the Resurrection is equivalent to murder, for it means to render him meaningless, and thereby dehumanize him.

This particularly needs to be understood by those who have been entrusted with the honorable and responsible duty of governing the people. They need to understand that the welfare of a society requires more than meeting the material needs of its members and enjoying relative social peace. Man needs something which will fill his life with meaning and motivate him to accomplish things of enduring value, both spiritual and cultural. Faith in the Resurrection, more than anything else, illumines human life with meaning -- not as some kind of 'opium of the people', given to sedate people and anesthetize them to the pain of mortal life, but rather as the living experience of love, in which we come to know that those whom we love in Christ will live forever.

That is why faith does not mean being exclusively preoccupied with the 'world to come' and being indifferent to earthly life. On the contrary, because we love our neighbor who is here alongside us and because of whom we enjoy life; because we love all of nature; because we know by faith that love is not something that can be reduced to a psychological experience and therefore relative, but rather something ontological and enduring, we in fact become more connected with others and with the world around us

True faith, therefore, always strengthens our ties with others and contributes to better relationships among members of a community. We need a stronger sense of community and stronger interpersonal relationships today in all areas, particularly in the framework of the family, which is experiencing a serious crisis in our time. Because of the fast pace of life dictated by a consumer society, people have less and less time for one another. Spouses drift farther apart, and children are left on their own. The Resurrection of Christ, by showing that the human person survives time and death, teaches us to pay more attention to persons, and to worry less about accumulating money. It teaches us that every moment spent with a loved one is infinitely precious and unrepeatable, and echoes into eternity. This age in which we live, when nearly every other marriage ends in divorce, and when a great many young people go astray, cries out for the kind of understanding and appreciation of marriage offered by the Christian faith in the light of the Resurrection.

Furthermore, it is clear that in these times of ours, in these times of progress in so many areas of life, the need exists for the Christian faith just as it was needed in every other era. It is clear also that faith is not incompatible with this progress. Furthermore, if we ponder the mysteries of life and death, that life is short and that man has no comfort in the knowledge that others will continue to live even after he is gone, we see that faith in the Resurrection is not contrary to human progress, but that true progress is impossible without faith. Whoever thinks more deeply about this will realize that the only real progress is progress that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven and to the Risen Christ. Anything else is simply a small detour beneath the grindstone of 'death's watermill'. Anything else just tires the human spirit like nightmarish wanderings along the paths of nonsense.

The Resurrection of Christ is 'the only thing new under the sun' because it has broken the monotony of the endless cycle of birth and death. This is why everything in the Church breathes the youthfulness of Christ's life. Sprinkled with His grace, the Holy Spirit has always kept the Church fresh and new through every epoch and turn of history. Kingdoms and civilizations change, but the Church, despite external variations, remains in its essence, in its relationship with its Head, the Risen Christ, always the same, always faithful to itself. And, in sanctifying and renewing everything in every age, it is always contemporary and always young. The youthfulness of the Church, the 'Bride of Christ', is found in the fact that it is the eternal Spring of the Spirit, the eternal budding forth of new Life.

The youthful vigor of Christianity is expressed in the fact that Christ's disciples and apostles were nearly all young people. It was not chance but Divine Providence that saw the God-man Christ endure His saving Passion precisely as a young man, in order to show that the Christian faith is the faith of youth.

This is why the Church has always poured out upon its members, whatever their age or stage of life, the eternally youthful power of Christ's Resurrection. This is why no one should be surprised that the Church has ever-increasing numbers of young people. The renewal of Church life in our time comes precisely from the young people. They come into the Church either from traditional Orthodox family settings, where the faith is mainly reduced to observing inherited customs, often without any understanding, or from so-called 'modern settings', most often of atheistic families. In either case, the young people reject the false values offered by their families and aspire to the living Truth, showing an incorruptibility of sense and feeling that distinguishes true life from empty existence and hypocrisy. In both cases the young people rebel for good reason: on the one hand against the empty performing of ritual customs without understanding the deeper meaning of the faith; on the other hand, against the illusion that progress is possible for one who rejects God and accepts death and nothingness as his final fate. This creative rebellion of the youth in the Church fits in with the revolt of Christ the God-man against the tyranny of death over God's creation. The saving revolution of Christ and His victory by death on the Cross and Resurrection has destroyed death and torn down the gates of hell.

Nonetheless, we cannot help but be challenged by the fearful knowledge that there are many of our young people who are walking a different path, the path of no return, where no one finds the goal they sought. Many who are not immersed in the sweetness of the Resurrection find life exceptionally tragic and bitter. The burning desire for life, left unfulfilled by the family and society, has often driven young people to flee from the real world into a world of illusion. That illusory world may be produced by the use of drugs, or by joining various sects, where a questionable and deceptive comfort is found in the feeling of fellowship that supposedly exists among the members of such organizations. All of us are to blame that we did not present to our youth, and to all our neighbors, that which belongs to them as rational beings. We are to blame that we have not shown them sufficiently strong models and that we have broken their lives by our own dull insensitivity and habitual thoughtlessness. These suffering ones thus are the rebuke that sums up the illusions of our society.

Let us hope that those who are drowning in a sea of folly will be able to grasp the outstretched hand of the God-man Christ, whose Resurrection is the only cure for their deadly pain. For only the Risen Christ is always extending His hand and waiting for persons to realize that He is the only end and goal of all their aspirations, sometimes even for those appear to be moving away from Him. We can only offer the Risen Christ to our youth, for He is the only Value worthy of their youth.

Only the Resurrection of Christ enables all of us, now and always and forever, to rejoice in Him with unfading joy. Only the Resurrection is joy not followed by sorrow. Let us rejoice, therefore, for today is the time when it is good to rejoice! Let us rejoice with the joy of Christ, the joy of the apostles and all the saints, and of all the righteous men of God! Let us rejoice, for every death is defeated! Let us rejoice, for every sin is forgiven! Let us rejoice, for forgiveness is available to all, except to those who do not rejoice at all, and who do not forgive in the Resurrection. Today, dear spiritual children, rejoicing because of all of you, we again and again greet you who are gathered at the Church's Liturgy around the Holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of the Risen Christ, in God's temples, both in the homeland and throughout the world, with the holy paschal greeting. We greet all our brother and sister Orthodox nations and the entire Christian world; we also greet all non-Christians; and heaven and earth, and every creature living or not we greet and kiss. For the joy of the Resurrection is given to us so that it may be poured out from us to every creature, even to the very least of God's creation, that we may bless all and proclaim the good news to all:

Christ is risen!

Given at the Serbian Patriarchate in Belgrade at Pascha, 2002. Your intercessors before the Risen Lord:

Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch PAVLE
Metropolitan of Zagreb and Ljubljana JOVAN
Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Coastlands AMPHILOHIJE
Metropolitan of Midwestern America CHRISTOPHER
Metropolitan of Dabro-Bosna NIKOLAJ
Bishop of Zica STEFAN
Bishop of Shabac-Valjevo LAVRENTIJE
Bishop of Nish IRINEJ
Bishop of Zvornik-Tuzla VASILIJE
Bishop of Srem VASILIJE
Bishop of Banja Luka JEFREM
Bishop-Administrator of Temisvar LUKIJAN
Bishop of Canada GEORGIJE
Bishop of Australia and New Zealand (New Gracanica Metropolitanate) NIKANOR
Bishop for America and Canada (New Gracanica Metropolitanate) LONGIN
Bishop of Eastern America MITROPHAN
Bishop of Banat CHRYSOSTOM
Bishop of Backa IRINEJ
Bishop of Great Britain and Scandinavia DOSITEJ
Bishop of Ras and Prizren ARTEMIJE
Retired Bishop of Zahumlje and Hercegovina ATANASIJE
Bishop of Bihac and Petrovac CHRYSOSTOM
Bishop of Osijek and Baranja LUKIJAN
Bishop of Central Europe CONSTANTINE
Retired Bishop of Western Europe DAMASKIN
Bishop of Western Europe LUKA
Bishop of Timok JUSTIN
Bishop of Vranje PAHOMIJE
Bishop of Western America JOVAN
Bishop of Slavonia SAVA
Bishop of Branicevo IGNATIJE
Bishop of Milesevo FILARET
Bishop of Dalmatia FOTIJE
Bishop of Zahumlje and Hercegovina GRIGORIJE
Vicar Bishop of Budimlje JOANIKIJE
Vicar Bishop of Jegar PORFIRIJE
Vicar Bishop of Hvostno ATANASIJE