EASTER MESSAGE OF THE VERY REVEREND FR. MESROP PARSAMYAN

Restored by the Grace of God

Place your worries on God—for He cares about you….  Stand firm in your faith, for you know that the whole family of believers throughout the world suffers along with you.  But after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace—who in Christ called you to His eternal glory—will restore you, all by Himself: make you strong, firm, and steadfast.  For His is the power and glory, forever.  (1 PETER 5:6-11)

With these words, the Apostle Peter reassured his Christian brothers and sisters in Asia Minor, as they lived through a time of crisis.  In those days, the Church was very young; the early Christians had so much to lose—and they had no experience of history to calm their spirits.  So Peter wrote to strengthen their hearts, with the wisdom he had gained from his years of service alongside Jesus Christ.

The pain of your loss is real, he told them; but you are not alone in your suffering.  God always cares for you; and when the time comes, He will restore you.

What made Peter so confident that God would restore His people, no matter what befell them?  The answer is: he had witnessed the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, on the first Easter Sunday.  And he knew the world would never be the same.

Just think of what it means for a dead man to come back to life!  It goes against the fundamental rules of the universe—where all things decay, all living creatures move towards death.  Peter knew that Christ, too, had died—died a painful and horrible death.  And yet three days later, he had seen Christ restored to life.  And more: he heard the promise, from Christ’s own lips, that God would restore every person who placed his or her faith in the Resurrection of the Lord.

On this evidence, Peter knew that Christ conquered death to restore human beings to what they were meant to be: to make us new again.

In Jesus Christ, God took upon Himself the broken human condition—and restored it to what it was meant to be: made it new again.  He brought nourishment to the hungry; healing to the sick; consolation to the grieving.  To the confused, he offered an example of upright, godly behavior.  To the sinful, he offered forgiveness.  Finally, to the dead—the dead in body as well as the dead in spirit—Christ offered Life.

But these blessings came at great cost.  Christ struggled, and endured great suffering, on our behalf.  His final battle was waged on the cross—and for a time, it looked like death had won.  But on Easter Sunday, “Christ was raised from the dead.”  And through his victory, we were saved.

My friends, we live in a time of many trials.  The world is exhausted from years of illness and isolation.  Our precious homeland of Armenia and Artsakh is dealing with the perilous aftermath of war.  This great country in which we live is plagued by deep moral confusion, doubt and anxiety.

We long to be restored to the way we were meant to be: to be made new again.

But there is only one power great enough to realize this hope: the power of God, in Jesus Christ.  His Resurrection is the sign that God loves us, and cares for us.  It is the promise that, even when we must endure trials and suffering, God has not forgotten us—and He will, in time, restore us.

That was the meaning of the first Easter Sunday.  It is the reality we must embrace in our hearts today.  And it is the Truth we must proclaim to the world, with conviction and love, in the beautiful words of the Armenian Church:

Krisdos haryave ee merelots!  Orhnyal eh haroutiunun Krisdosi!
Christ is raised from the dead!  Blessed is the resurrection of Christ!

With prayers,

Fr. Mesrop Parsamyan

Primate

Easter 2023