Paschal Homily of Saint Justin Popovich

Humanity sentenced God to death; by His Resurrection, Jesus sentenced humanity to immortality.

In return for a beating, He gives an embrace; for abuse, a blessing; for death, immortality.

Humanity never showed so much hate for God as when they crucified Him; and God never showed more love for humanity than when He arose.

Humanity even wanted to reduce God to a mortal, but God by Jesus’ Resurrection made humans immortal.

The crucified God is Risen and has killed death. Death is no more. Immortality has surrounded humanity and all the world.

By the Resurrection of Jesus, human nature has been led irreversibly onto the path of immortality, and has become dreadful to death itself.

For before the Resurrection of Christ, death was dreadful to humanity, but after the Resurrection of Christ, humanity has become more dreadful to death.

When humanity lives by faith in the Risen God-Man, it lives above death, out of its reach; it is a footstool for God’s feet: “O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?” (I Cor. 15:55).

When a human belonging to Christ dies, the person simply sets aside one’s body like clothing, in which that person will again be vested on the day of Dread Judgement.

Before the Resurrection of the God-Man, death was the second nature of humanity: life first, death second.

But by His Resurrection, the Lord has changed everything: immortality has become the second nature of humanity, it has become natural for humanity; and death – unnatural.

As before the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for humans to be mortal, so after the Resurrection of Christ, it was natural for humans to be immortal.

By sin, humanity became mortal and transient; by the Resurrection of the God-Man, it became immortal and perpetual. In this is the power, the might, the all-mightiness of the Resurrection of Christ.

[...] Because of the Resurrection of Christ, because of His victory over death, humanity has become, and continues to become, and will continue becoming Christian.

The entire history of Christianity is nothing other than the history of a unique miracle, namely, the Resurrection of Christ, which is unbrokenly threaded through the hearts of Christians from one day to the next, from year to year, across the centuries, until the Dread Judgment.

A person is born, in fact, not when his mother brings the child into the world, but when the child comes to believe in the Risen Christ, for then the child is born to life eternal, whereas a mother bears children for death, for the grave.

The Resurrection of Christ is the mother of us all, all Christians, the mother of immortals. By faith in the Resurrection, humanity is born anew, born for eternity.

Justin Popovich (1894-1979; Orthodox Church):Paschal Homily

*edited by Father Vladimir for more inclusive language

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