A Blessed Holy and Great Week Ahead


The earliest crucifixion in an illuminated manuscript from the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, 586AD.

“I magnify Your Passion, and I extol Your burial and Your Resurrection, as I cry out: O Lord, glory to You!”

Μεγαλύνω τὰ Πάθη σου, ὑμνολογῶ καὶ τὴν Ταφὴν σου, σὺν τῇ Ἀναστάσει, κραυγάζων, Κύριε δόξα σοι.

Dear Friends of St Andrew's

A short message from St Andrew’s Theological College, on behalf of His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Australia, our College President and Dean, and all the Faculty, to wish you and your families a spiritually uplifting and Light-filled Easter.

Let us focus on the life-giving message of Holy and Great Week, during which the entire Passion of Christ will unfold before us, giving us an opportunity, once again, to receive Him truly into our life! It is a week in which the gift of Christ’s unfading light to come enters human history providing serenity and solace amongst life’s many anxieties as it reveals to us “the certainty that Someone loves us”.[1]

It is the Passion of Christ which not only discloses for us our true purpose in life, not only does it reveal the human spirit’s ultimate goal and destiny, but it also shows forth the very reason as to why we were created—namely, to be one with our loving God by grace and to share in His beatitude for all eternity!

Our Lord’s suffering on the Cross and His Resurrection bring to light that which can truly fulfil and quench our human longing to be set free from the confines of time and space; the one concern that truly matters—namely, how we might enter into the Paradise of ‘eternity’, our Lord’s Kingdom, for which we were created, already by way of foretaste in this life.

Throughout Holy and Great Week, we will be reminded that the inexpressible joy of Paradise can in fact be attained in actuality! How, might we ask? In seeking to live the truth of this life focused on the Cross—which means a readiness on our part to embrace, and indeed to suffer, our own personal crosses in life. In so doing, however, the mystery Resurrection will be opened up before us, so that we too may enter into this reality, already in the here and now.

Indeed, the paradox of the Cross teaches us that the resurrected Christ did indeed gift the entire world with this ‘life’-filled reality. For us, it remains to accept and receive this priceless gift into our life. And we do indeed do so, only when we are ready to literally give up our limited and confined life—that is our creaturely existence—and in its stead, endeavouring to anchor our entire being in Christ crucified, who is the Source and Author of Life, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, but to those who are called… Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God!” (1Cor 1:23-24).

Christ Himself taught: “those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:39). And so, in our ‘brokenness’, “let us go forth and meet the immortal Bridegroom [τῷ ἀθανάτῳ Νυμφίῳ Χριστῷ ὕμνοις συναντήσωμεν]”, let us come before Him and, in learning to lean on His life-giving Cross, let us find rest and Resurrection!

A blessed and salvific Pascha to all!

Philip Kariatlis

Sub-Dean

 

[1] Archimandrite Vasileios, Apotypomata [in Greek], (Holy Iveron Monastery, 2024), 25.

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