Paschal Encyclical 2025

Details

By The Holy Synod of the GOC

Created on Tuesday, 22 April 2025 22:21

[PDF]

REPUBLIC OF GREECE

CHURCH OF THE GENUINE ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS OF GREECE 

HOLY SYNOD

KANINGOS 32 (3rd floor)

106 82 ATHENS

TEL. 21038 28 280 - FAX 21038 47 365

ΕΛΛΑΣ – GREECE

www.ecclesiagoc.gr

Protocol No. 3403

Athens, March 21/April 3, 2025

RESURRECTIONAL (PASCHAL) MESSAGE FOR 2025

“Thy Cross, O Lord, is life and resurrection for Thy people….”

(Sticheron at the Praises of Sunday Matins, Plagal of Tone 2)

Beloved Fathers and Brethren, Children in the Risen Lord:

We have arrived yet again at Orthodox Pascha, at the inexpressible joy of life, light, and eternity. The certainty of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ brought surpassing joy to His Disciples and Apostles. This Grace and joy are treasured up in our Holy Church, and we participate in it by means of the Holy Mysteries and virtues.

Every Sunday in the Church’s liturgical year, we hear in the Matins Gospel the very same joyful tidings of the Resurrection, which the blessed Myrrhbearing Women received from the Holy Angel. And just as they did, we hasten “with fear and great joy” (St. Matthew 28:8) to transform the tidings of the Resurrection into experience, that is, to realize it in the conduct of our inner and outer life.

The Resurrection of Christ constitutes an assurance that, with death, we also pass into eternal life. On account of this, the Holy Chrysostomos so decisively stresses in his Catechetical Oration: “Let none fear death, for the Savior’s death has freed us!”

* * * 

Beloved Brethren:

Let us not forget that the sacrifice remains engraved upon our Risen Lord; that He indelibly bears the tokens of the Divine Suffering, for the Cross and the Resurrection are inseparable. In glorifying the Resurrection, we also glorify the Life-Giving Cross, since through it the passage and transition from death to life was accomplished.

The Theanthropic Lord lived by the Cross in this world of corruption, that He might show us how to overcome our confinement therein. He lived in wondrous obedience to the Heavenly Father, immediately repulsing the tempting suggestions of untimely and unnecessary indulgences in life’s necessities, as well as those of avoiding suffering, sacrifice, and death.

If we, too, reject the temptations of sin and endure patiently the pains of our own afflictions, the Divine gift of holiness can be poured out and bestowed also upon us who are faithful Orthodox Christians.

Saint Gregory the Theologian exhorts us to this when he writes, “Be crucified with Him, die with Him, and be buried with Him eagerly, that you may also be resurrected with Him, be glorified with Him, and reign together with Him” (Oration 38, “On the Nativity,” ch. 18).

The order of the Church’s Great Fast, which precedes the Holy Resurrection, has this in view: how we may cast off the burden of the aberrations of both body and soul which alienate us from the Cross and the Resurrection. Without this, salvation is not attained and is not to be found. Only through the Cross-bearing path of life do we experience the exodus of resurrection and the freedom of eternity.

* * *

Beloved Fathers and Brethren:

True Pascha on earth, as a foretaste of the eschatological Pascha in the Kingdom of Heaven, cannot be celebrated without these indispensable prerequisites: the casting away of every evil and vice; the repudiation of every shameful deed; the purification of the heart and the adornment with the Divine virtues, that we may attain the vision of the radiant Pascha. Only those who are arrayed in such radiance, who are light-bearers and Christ-bearers, are able to enter into the Bridal Chamber of the Divine Glory, into the longed-for Paradise of delight. We are reminded of this by our Paschal candles, which we light from the holy Bema, as receiving Light from the unwaning Light.

This bright and holy Day do we steadfastly proclaim, since the preservation of the eternal Orthodox Paschalion of our Church does and will abide unaltered and free from innovation. Every attempt at the supposed astronomical “correction” thereof, which has been pursued and is pursued by the fallen Ecumenists for the sake of concelebrating with the heterodox, is condemned by our Orthodox Faith and Tradition.

May we—as genuine children of Holy Orthodoxy—be found worthy of the eternal Pascha of incorruption in the Kingdom of the Triple-Sunned Godhead. Amen!

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

The Archbishop

† KALLINIKOS of Athens

The Members

† GERONTIOS of Piraeus and Salamis

† CHRYSOSTOMOS of Attica and Boeotia

† GREGORIOS of Thessalonica

† PHOTIOS of Demetrias

† MOSES of Toronto

† DEMETRIUS of America

† AMBROSIOS of Philippi and Maroneia

† KYPRIANOS of Oropos and Phyle

† KLEMES of Larisa and Platamon

† AMBROSE of Methone

† AUXENTIOS of Etna and Portland

† CHRISTODOULOS of Theoupolis

† MAXIMUS of Pelagonia

Assistant Bishops

† DANIEL of Nikopolis (Jakarta)

† KALLINIKOS of Talantion

† BENEDICT of Astoria

[signed and sealed as a BONA FIDE COPY]

The First Secretary of the Holy Synod

† Photios of Demetrias