“Ye are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14), said the Lord to His disciples. And we, dear fathers, brothers and sisters, counting ourselves as among the disciples of Christ, are called to preach His Resurrection both with a good word and by the power of living according to the Gospel.
It is the fear of God — that is, sensing the Divine presence in our lives and walking reverently before God, fearing to grieve Him through sin — that leads to peace; for “the fear of the Lord”, as the Old Testament sage writes, “is glory and honor, happiness and the crown of joy."
We therefore exhort all the faithful children of the Church to be such peacemakers, and to be, as His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) once called us, "sons of the Resurrection."
By God’s ineffable goodness, we enter once more into the joyous days of the great feasts of Christ’s Nativity and Theophany. I sincerely greet you all with this world-saving joy!
JUBILEE EPISTLE of His Eminence Metropolitan HILARION on the Occasion of the 800th Anniversary of the Birth of the Holy Right-Believing Great Prince Alexander Nevsky and the Centennial of the I All-Diaspora Council
By God’s ineffable goodness, we enter once more into the joyous days of the great feasts of Christ’s Nativity and Theophany. I sincerely greet you all with this world-saving joy!
Jubilee Epistle of His Eminence Hilarion Metropolitan of Eastern America and New York First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad
NEW YORK: November 18, 2020
From my whole heart, I wish for you all to spend these all-joyous days in good health and cheerful disposition, perceiving the victorious power of God and the illumination of the Light of His Resurrection on the Third Day, so that in the future, when it seems to us that “Hades doth reign,” we might remember that its reign over us is “not forever,” as we read in the canon of Great Saturday, and that we might find in that the strength to overcome any trials in this life!
The Holy Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has no option except, with profound sorrow and yet with full conviction, publicly to register her assent with the decision of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Moscow.