Beloved Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

“We have seen the Resurrection of Christ,” are the words we confessed immediately after the Resurrection of Christ on Easter Morning. We declared with certainty that we were worthy to see the Risen Lord, Who asks for our love in return for His own sacrificial Love.

After His Resurrection, the Lord asked Peter: “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me” (Jn. 21:15); He addresses the same question to each of us personally throughout time: “My child, do you love me”? What will our answer to Him be?

The Lord stretched out His bloody palms on the Cross and “joined the two together.” He stretched out His palms and united man with God and his fellow man. On His Cross He showed us the measure of true love. That is why the Christian poet says: “Do not ask me what the measure of love is; look at the Cross.” The question that should concern us is: How will we prove in practice our love for the crucified and risen Lord, Who loved us with “perfect love” (Jn. 13:1)?

The proof of our own love for Christ passes only through our love for our “neighbor.” There is no other way or path; it is the one and only way. Christ, with His sacrifice on the Cross, showed us the measure of our own love for each of our fellow human beings. The Evangelist John speaks clearly on this subject: “Beloved, If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn. 4:11).

At the end of the Easter Morning service we also sang, “Let us embrace one another.” And after calling everyone our “brothers and sisters,” the Church then exhorted us to “forgive everything because of the resurrection.” The sacred hymnographer here uses the word “everything;” this is not a rhetorical exaggeration, it means that we must love and forgive everyone for everything without distinction. After the Resurrection of Christ, we are not allowed to have “enemies.” Everyone without exception must find room in our loving heart. To love means, first of all, to forgive everyone. And to forgive means to “make space”, to have a wide heart. It means that I open my heart to accommodate the “other”, the “opponent”, the “stranger”, the “different”, even the one who hurt and harmed me. I have a “big heart” that can accommodate within it, with magnanimity and dignity, the weakness and idiosyncrasy of the other.

Love and forgiveness towards the “neighbor” is proof of our love for God, while hatred is proof that we follow in our lives its inspirer and father, that is the Devil, who with hatred destroys and drives away mutual love between people. Jesus Christ died because of satanic hatred (Mt. 27:18), but with His death on the Cross, He destroyed hatred and brought love back to the world.

Now, after the Resurrection of Christ, whoever hates and whoever does not forgive, cannot be in communion with the God of perfect love, of infinite mercy and boundless charity. Whoever does not love and forgive everyone cannot sing: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs granting life.” With love and forgiveness we attract the grace of God to our hearts, because “the Lord is pleased by nothing more than when we forgive our fellow man” (St. John Chrysostom). “My child, God does not hide behind bushes! Nor do you need to climb mountains to meet Him! He comes and finds you, every time you forgive someone who has wronged you, every time you help someone in need… Divine Grace is drawn, my child, it is not coerced.” (St. Sophrony of Essex).

May each of us become a person of the divine double love; love for God and love for our neighbor, according to the biblical commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:4-5), “and your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Thus, our entire life will be a Resurrectional feast. Thus, the Resurrection of Christ will truly be the center of our lives, just as it is the center of our faith and of our Church.

My beloved, 

On behalf of the clergy, monks and our collaborators in the Lord, I wholeheartedly extend my wishes to you and your loved ones, that your lives may always be bathed in the light of the Resurrection; that you may be “children of the resurrection” (Lk. 20:36). That you may have health of soul and body and that you may spread love around you everywhere and always”, so that just as Christ was resurrected, so also will you be resurrected, according to his word”.

Christ is Risen!

Always with much love and honor in the Risen Lord,

+ Metropolitan Ambrosios of Korea and Exarch of Japan