Christ is risen!
Beloved brothers and sisters,

Christ Himself will resurrect us faithful Christians from eternal death and from all its evil offshoots. Christ Himself, as the God-Man, has descended into hell to resurrect all the deceased from the beginning of time.

Pascha — ransom from sorrow! Pascha — Christ the Redeemer! — Pascha —  that hath opened the gates of Paradise to us!

Thus we sing in these bright days of joyous celebration. During more than thirty centuries the sons of Israel celebrated the Old Testament Pascha, which was the image of the Christian, true, New Testament Pascha, that we Christians celebrate each year, and which is the basis of our salvation and of our eternal life.

Pascha  — “ransom from sorrow”. In the time of Moses, when the angel of the Lord was sent to kill all the first-born in Egypt, the Israelites were delivered from this last terrible plague; each family was redeemed by the sacrificial blood of the lamb placed on their doors. Three days after this horrible night, after the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, the Israelites began to celebrate; they had passed from Egyptian captivity into liberty. This crossing of the Israelites through the Red Sea is an image of baptism, through which we are delivered from the power of the devil and from the slavery of sin.

Pascha  — “Christ the Redeemer”. Christ Himself became the Lamb of the Redemption for all humanity, when His most precious Blood, spilled on the earth, resulted in the deliverance of men from eternal death. On the third day, Christ, the Savior of the world, was resurrected from the dead, and separated the Christians who believed in Him from those who were persecuting them. “Rejoice” — was the first thing Christ said after His Resurrection. “Rejoice always” — the holy apostles tirelessly proclaimed, echoing Christ’s message, for great is the reward in Heaven.

Pascha — “that hath opened the gates of Paradise to us”.

This great Pascha will be consummated at the end of the world in the Kingdom of God, as Christ Himself has predicted, Who, as the Good Shepherd, will stand up between those who are with Him in Heaven and those who are foreign to Him on earth.

O hades, where is thy power? O death, where is thy sting? Up to then, in fact, there was no separation between the good and the evil, because evil was hiding under the guise of goodness, and was, without being noticed,  encroaching upon the good ones. I remember a time when I boldly asked the Lord to show me what Hell is all about. And suddenly, without being part of hell, I saw all its horror. All those there were hitting each other with a wild fury, inflicting a terrible pain upon each other, but they could not kill, because there was no more death.

Here there will be a terrible separation between the good ones and the evil ones, and, of course, everyone will try to join the side of the good ones, but God’s Angels will unerringly separate the evil from the good. Then, to those who have obeyed God’s commandments, the “gates of Paradise” will be opened, leading to the new, holy city of Jerusalem, where the Lord Himself will wipe from their eyes every tear, and death will be no more, and there will be no more sickness, sorrow or sighing.

Truly He is Risen!

May the Lord bless all of you!