...ce, Christ is among us! He is and always shall be! Dear Clergy and Faithful: I write to you on the threshold of the Great Fast, our annual forty-day journey to the great and happy Day of the Paschal Victory of Jesus Christ. I write to you out of my profound desire that you and I, in the Paschal Celebration, may enter into the joy of the Angels on that day. And so I take this opportunity ...

...and despair. And in His life, sin was vanquished by His Divine Innocence, and death was swallowed up by the infinite glory of His Divine Immortality. Let no one doubt the importance of this Day. Pascha is the foundation of every Feast. Pascha is the source of every Sunday. The fact of the physical Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the basis, the very charter, of Christianity. There can be no Chris...

...w into the courts of the Resurrected Christ, and the Body of His Church. When the Spirit descended upon the company of disciples in the Upper Room, at that brightest of Third Hours, the glory of Pascha gushed forth as a fountain into the desert of human events. The Church of God, the Body of Christ, was quickened that day, very much like the body of Adam was quickened by the breath of God in Par...

...joice and be glad in it! Today is the Day that is larger than twenty four hours. It cannot be contained by a single square on the calendar. This uncontainable, untamed and unrestrained nature of Pascha is due to the uncontainable nature of Christ, Himself, the Risen Lord. The Resurrection of Christ was beyond all expectation, even though this very event was prophesied repeatedly by the Prophet...

... yours- But it was right that we celebrate and rejoice, for this, your brother, was dead and is alive again,- he was lost and is now found- " (St. Luke 15 :31,32) Let this be the hallmark of our Paschal celebrations. Let this be the spirit of our participation in the Liturgy. It is meet and right that we celebrate and rejoice -both for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We wer...

...nderstanding, into our souls and hearts, into our mind and imagination, these words can make of our Holy Lent a true journey back to the House of our Father, where we shall partake of the Mystical Paschal Banquet of the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world and the stain from our souls. And it all begins with our will, our desire, what we really want out of life. The younger of the tw...

...wn personal resurrection, and offer gratitude to Him Who has rolled away the stone and the stench of our personal sins, faults, and shortcomings. In that newness of life that is the glory of the Pascha, let us ever walk in the knowledge of the Resurrection, in the power of the Holy Spirit. CHRIST IS RISEN! CHRISTOS VOSKRESE! CHRIST IS RISEN! With love and joy in the Risen Christ, Most sin...

...is saving labor of love. Their horizon was still marked by the shadow of the old. The infinite dawn had yet to arise in their hearts. So it was that the Holy Women proceeded to the Tomb that first Pascha morning. So it was that they fully expected to find the Lord of Glory sleeping in His grave. So it was that their purpose was to complete the rites of burial. But in bringing their fragrant myrr...

...llective experience the guidelines for Lenten Fasting. Essentially, the rule of the Church for Lent is to "Strict Fast" -abstaining from meat and dairy products from the First Monday of Lent until Pascha. This time includes both Saturdays and Sundays, which in the Orthodox reckoning are considered apart of Lent, unlike the reckoning of the Western Churches. To those who are able, we wholeheartedly...

...of God. Let this altar of our hearts be surrounded, be enveloped with the incense of prayer, the sweet savor of thanksgiving, gratitude and praise.           Brothers and Sisters in Christ, this Pascha, this Holy and Great Feast of the Resurrection, let us leap up from the lethargy that sin instills in us, and put off the unprofitable works of the dream [or nightmare!] worlds that we may have cr...