In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen.

It is important for us as we are exchanging this Paschal greeting: “Christ is risen” to remember that this is not just a custom. This is very much a proclamation of our faith. Christ is risen from the dead, and because He rose from the dead He gives us life. He conquered sin. He conquered death. In the times when I’ve had the blessing to be in Ukraine or Russia during the Paschal season I always enjoy how the faithful shout: “Indeed He is risen”. It almost takes your ears off.

We restrained Canadians have to overcome our inhibition. There is nothing more important for us than the fact that Christ is risen. If Christ is not risen from the dead, nothing else matters. We might as well go, and be social workers, and join the Lions Club. Christ is risen, and so we are here today. Christ is risen, and we are here together in this hospital for sinners.

This is another thing people are constantly making a mistake about. I hear it all the time -- people griping because in the Church there are problems: in the Church people gossip; in the Church people backbite; in the Church people are hypocrites. Orthodoxy is living out the whole Truth, and organisation is very peripheral for us. We try to be organised – it’s true, and we try to make sense of things, because that’s the way we human beings have to live together. There has to be some sort of organisation. But the Grace of the Holy Spirit is greater than all of our organisation. The problem, of course, with our organisation is that we can’t just let a little bit of organisation do. We have to sign, seal, deliver, and guarantee everything, and we bind ourselves up in every sort of rule. We bind ourselves up with every sort of regulation. Then we wonder why we are strangled, and can’t move because we have made provision for so many little, minute things. Still, the Grace of the Holy Spirit is greater than all of these things. Even though we, in our sheep-like behaviour, do these things, the Lord still liberates us from ourselves. He liberates us from the restraints that we put on ourselves. He still breathes life into all those rules we put on ourselves, and with which we constrain ourselves. He breathes His life into all of that. That is why even though we have organisation to an extent, when people say that they don’t want to belong to “organised religion”, they need to belong to the Orthodox Church!

Why do we paralyse ourselves with all of these rules? We do all of these rules to ourselves because of fear. We are afraid. Human beings live in fear. That’s why we are a hospital for sinners. We, the hospital for sinners, are here all together acknowledging that we are all in the same boat. Without Jesus Christ we can do nothing. Without the support, and help of each other, too, in Christ, we can’t do anything. It’s an important fact we all have to acknowledge. That’s why this is not a society of perfect, and professional Christians. This is a society of people who are trying to live the Christian life, and our whole lives are about that: falling down, and getting up. A monk was asked what he did in the monastery. The answer was: I fall down, and I get up; I fall down, and I get up.

That’s what we are all doing here, even the bishop: we are all falling down, and getting up. We always have to apologise to each other for our slips, and our falls, for our mistakes, for our fears. Especially for our fears. These fears, which bother all of us to a greater or lesser extent, are the main tools of the devil to keep us separated from each other, to keep us broken apart from each other. It’s this that the Master of division, the devil, uses always to divide the sheep away from the Shepherd. He divides first the sheep from each other by planting suspicions in our hearts which we voluntarily accept, gullible that we are. We then nurse these things, and unless we come to a point where we are confronted with the fact that this thought that I accepted is in fact a lie, I end up “going out the door” because eventually I can’t believe anyone or trust anyone. That’s where the devil takes all of us. It has happened to many people in the course of our Christian life. In the course of all of human history, this is how the devil has always been dividing us, and conquering us, by pulling us away from Christ.

When the Myrrh-bearing Women are at the tomb, and are confronted with the empty tomb, and the angels are saying that Jesus Christ is risen, commanding them to go, and tell everyone, they do not tell anyone at the beginning because they are absolutely shocked, and amazed, and afraid. Wouldn’t you be? After two thousand years, we are used to the fact of the Resurrection. But for these women today, it’s their first encounter with it. How can they not be afraid? If we go on later in the Gospel reading for today, we are going to see that the Myrrh-bearing Women were not the only ones that were afraid. All the Apostles were afraid too, absolutely flabbergasted, and amazed, and they didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t until Christ encountered each of them in His Resurrection that they began to comprehend. Yes, the impossible actually has happened. Christ was not stolen or anything else. He is risen from the dead.

In the Gospels about the Resurrection (and there are four different versions of this – that is, four different persons’ experience of the Resurrection of Christ to read from), these four different persons are showing us by their encounter with Christ how He really convinced them that He is risen from the dead. He even ate fish with them. He was with them forty days, explaining to them, and helping them to understand everything that had gone before. Peter, and the others thought that they understood everything about Who Christ is. Then they all ran away because they were confused when He was going to be crucified. They couldn’t figure it out at all because they really didn’t understand everything that the Saviour had been saying to them. He had given them preparation for everything but they had preconceived ideas about Who is the Messiah, and what the Messiah is going to do (all sorts of popular ideas in the society of the time, and in the Scriptures, and the writings of all sorts of people): the Messiah would establish an earthly kingdom, better than Soloman’s, and everything like that. They didn’t understand at all about the Kingdom, the Kingdom not being of this earth.

The non-understanding of the Myrrh-bearing Women, and of the Apostles, too, the malcomprehension of them at the first encounter with the Resurrection is just like Doubting Thomas. It is all connected. These doubts, this non-comprehension, give us the opportunity through their subsequent encounters with Christ to be convinced of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. And not only that, we have two thousand years of continuous experience of Orthodox Christians, and other Christians, too, with Jesus Christ, who is risen from the dead. It is the same Jesus Christ, always and forever, as the Apostle is saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews. I love to quote this Epistle because in my childhood there was a Norwegian in Bible study who always quoted it. He quoted it through my entire childhood. Ole Olson said: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). It really stuck, especially because of his strong accent, I suppose, but also because of what sort of a Christ-loving man he was. He was really a good example of a Christian. This same Jesus Christ has been encountering you, and me, and all the people that have gone before us, those who introduced us to Christ. This same Jesus Christ has been showing Himself in His love to all of us as the same Person. We see ourselves in our encounter with Jesus Christ in the Gospels: Jesus Christ as He is appearing to the Apostle Paul, Jesus Christ as He encounters various saints. We are all recognising in ourselves, too, the same experience of the same loving Person, the same life-giving Person.

It’s important for us to remember that our life as Christians is the life of spiritual warfare. It’s really important for us to pay attention to this fact in our lives. We who are following Christ are the target of the Tempter. The Tempter will come, and try throughout our whole life (he never goes away) in one way or another to drag us away from Christ. He will try to distract us, to turn us in on ourselves, divide us from each other, and pull us down. It is important for us all, always, to keep the eyes of our bodies, and our hearts on Jesus Christ alone, and on Him chiefly through His Mother, and through the saints who are successive generations of living examples revealing Christ in them. We can all count on Jesus Christ alone. Every human being, wanting to or not wanting to, fails every other human being. None of us can escape the fact that we are limited, and we will, even by accident, by misunderstanding, by who knows what, fail other human beings. However, if we keep our eyes on the Saviour, and if we learn to apologise to each other for making mistakes (even if we didn’t know we were making a mistake, because we all like to justify ourselves, and excuse ourselves), and simply say: I’m sorry, we will be farther ahead.

More and more I am convinced that the Twelve-Step Blue Book would not be a bad idea for everyone to be participating in. You don’t necessarily have to go to meetings all the time but that wouldn’t hurt, either. The Twelve-Step Programme helps people get over their inhibitions with each other, and admit that they are all in the same boat. They all can’t overcome whatever it is without God. Actually, the more I am hearing about this Twelve-Step Programme, the more I am being told by people who are better educated than I, that this is really a very Orthodox programme, a very Orthodox system. It fits us. However, we have to understand who’s who – that’s all. Our Helper is Jesus Christ, and after that, everything falls into place. There is no-one here, myself included, who could dare to say that he or she is not addicted. We may not be addicted to alcohol; we may not be addicted to some drug or other, but we are definitely addicted to two things: ourselves, and sin. Those two things are more deadly than anything else. It would be very good for us to follow this programme of Twelve Steps, and to admit together that we are all in the same boat of distraction, and sin, and betrayal of the Saviour, too, because of that. We can better help each other in admitting that we are all in the same boat, and need to get out of the quicksand with the help of the Saviour. It’s fear, fear, fear that we all have to overcome. The Myrrh-bearing Women, the Apostles, every Christian, has to overcome fear, and it can only be overcome in Christ.

We must keep our eyes on Christ, turning to Him when we are tempted, turning to Him when we are feeling fear, turning to Him when we are in turmoil, turning to Him when we are having doubts. Even if a brother or sister should slip in his or her support of us, still we should accept the good intentions of the brother or sister, and Christ’s reassurance through the brother or sister. We should pray also for the brother or sister who slips. Our supporters may slip, but we slip in our support, too. Let’s pray for each other, and support each other so that when we slip we will not fall seriously. We will help to pick each other up. We will all together, supporting each other, enter the Kingdom in the light of the Resurrection, together with those Myrrh-bearing Women, the Apostles, and all the saints who have gone before us, our parents, our ancestors, and everyone else, and in the Kingdom proclaim our faith: “Christ is risen”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America