Vigils Reading – Easter Sunday

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

IS OUR RESURRECTION

By Symeon the New Theologian

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Already Easter, that joyful day, that day of all gladness and delight, the

day of Christ’s resurrection, has arrived in the circle of the year. But rather, it

happens daily and eternally in those who know its mystery, and so has filled our

hearts with unspeakable joy and gladness. Let us look and carefully examine

what is the mystery of that resurrection of Christ our God which takes place

mystically in us at all times, if we are willing…

Christ our God was hanged on the cross and nailed on it the sin of the

world. He tasted death and went down to the uttermost depths of hell… He

returned from hell into His own spotless body, from which He had in no way

been separated as He descended…and He arose from the dead. After that He

ascended into heaven with great glory and power. So, likewise, as we have now

come out of the world and entered into the tomb of repentance and humiliation

by being assimilated to the sufferings of the Lord, He Himself comes down from

heaven and enters into our body as into a tomb. He unites Himself to our souls

and raises them up, though they were undoubtedly dead, and then grants to him

who has thus been raised with Christ that he may see the glory of His mystical

resurrection.

Christ’s resurrection is thus our resurrection, ours who lie here below. He

who has never fallen into sin, as it is written, nor lost anything whatever of His

own glory, how will He ever be raised up or be glorified, since He is always

glorified above all and remains the same, “far above all rule and authority”…?

Through His resurrection in us it comes into being in us, is shown to us, and is

seen by us. Once He has appropriated what is ours, that which He works in us

He attributes to Himself…

The body is dead and cannot live or be called alive unless it receives the

living soul in itself and is joined to it, though not mingled with it. Likewise the

soul cannot live unless it is ineffably and without confusion united to God, who

is truly the life eternal…

A blind man who hits his foot against a stone feels it, but a dead man does

not… In spiritual things, unless the mind comes to the contemplation of the

things that are above thought, it does not perceive the mystical activity. Those

who have not arrived at contemplation in spiritual matters and claim that they

perceive the things that are above intellect, word, and thought are like those

whose eyes are blinded and who have a sensation of good or bad things that they

experience, but do not know what is in their hands or at their feet, even if they

are for them a matter of life or death. Since they are deprived of the faculty and

perception of vision they in no way perceive the bad or the good things that

come upon them. Thus they will often lift up their staff to ward off an enemy

and possibly strike a friend instead, while their enemy stands before their eyes

and laughs at them.

Most people believe in the resurrection of Christ, but very few have a clear

vision of it. Those who have no vision thereof cannot even adore Christ Jesus as

the Holy One and as Lord.