A Paschal Sermon

Given by Patriarch Pavle of Blessed Memory

in the Year 2002

EDITOR’S NOTE: Patriarch Pavle was the chief hierarch of the

Serbian Orthodox Church at a time when many young people in Serbia,
disillusioned both by the manifest failures of Communism and by the
emptiness of materialism and hedonism imported from the West, were
returning to the Church. The American-led NATO bombing of Serbia in
1999, during which Serbia’s youth saw the idol of happiness from the West
fall to dust along with the buildings of their capital city, only increased
this influx of youth into the Church. Patriarch Pavle, as a true father
of his people, labored to make a home in the Church for these searching
souls. He knew that young people were rebelling against the status quo for
good reason, and he rejoiced when this rebellion set them on the path to
the Heavenly Kingdom; but he also knew that, in the case of many, this
rebellion was leading in the opposite direction—toward death and hell.
In the following Paschal sermon His Holiness addresses the condition of
young people in his country—which of course is mirrored by the state of
youth throughout the modern world—and points to what must be done
for them and by them in order that they may share in Christ’s victory
over death and hell, which He accomplished through His saving death
and glorious Resurrection.

279
 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!

I n 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 the Church would entirely lose its
meaning and its strength. “For if Christ is not risen,” says the Holy
Apostle Paul, “our faith is in vain” (cf. I Cor. 15:14). 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.

281
 THE ORTHODOX WORD
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.

282
 A PASCHAL SERMON OF PATRIARCH PAVLE
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 water mill.” 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 Church has always been

283
 THE ORTHODOX WORD
kept fresh and new by the Holy Spirit 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.

284
 A PASCHAL SERMON OF PATRIARCH PAVLE
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
he seeks. 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 Icon of Christ’s Resurrection (1573)
drugs, or by joining various from Decani Monastery, Kosovo.
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

285
 THE ORTHODOX WORD
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 who 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 people
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 in
the Resurrection—except to those who do not rejoice at all, and who
do not forgive.
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!

286