Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!
No words greater signify the Resurrection of our Lord for us as Orthodox Christians than “Christ is Risen!” Because of the Resurrection, we no longer fear death, as it has been defeated. Because of the Resurrection, we are no longer separated from God but are united to Him through Baptism. Because of the Resurrection, we have eternal life – not just after our death, but most importantly, now!
No one can dispute the fact that Jesus Christ lived. It is a historical fact. Many have refused to believe however, that He was God and was resurrected on the third day. The story of the Resurrection does indeed give hope to a desperate, fallen world; it brings light to those who are in darkness – those living in the darkness of sin and separation from God. The famous philosopher, Karl Marx, did not believe in the Resurrection. To him, it seemed impossible, unthinkable, that someone could be God and Man, that the god-man person could be born, crucified and not be held in the grave by death, and rise on the third day. The story of the Resurrection to him seemed so hard to believe that he regarded it as a myth, a fairy tale. Marx understood very well man’s yearning to understand the meaning of his existence, and he also believed that man would not find the meaning of life in Jesus Christ and His Resurrection. In fact, he referred to Christianity as the opium of the masses. He called it this because he was certain that the Christian faith provided a false hope in life after death, and that Christianity was a drug that people took in order not to have to deal with the nothingness of their lives and existence.
We as Christians know that Karl Marx was wrong. How was he wrong? Can we actually prove the Resurrection? When we think of proving something, we usually think of the scientific method in which we make a hypothesis, and perform an experiment in order to test that hypothesis. After performing the experiment several times, we may then come to a conclusion about our hypothesis. The Resurrection is not something that we can repeat over and over to test its validity. However, we have something else which proves the Resurrection – the relics of the Saints.
At our Baptism and our Chrismation, we receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been given to us in order to help us in the process of the purification of our souls—or simply—loving God with all our mind, heart and soul (Matthew 22:37). As we struggle against the passions, in other words, our sinful nature, and cooperate with the grace of the Holy Spirit, we allow the Holy Spirit to fill our whole being, body and soul, with grace, until we become through the course of time complete temples of the Holy Spirit. The saints in the church are the supreme examples of those who have achieved this state of grace and sanctification. As St. Simeon the New Theologian explains, “What happens to the bodies of the saints is the same as what happens when fire and iron are united. When the iron is made fiery by the fire, it loses its dark coloring and partakes of the brilliance of the fire, while when it is separated from the fire, it turns dark and cold again. The same thing happens with the saints. When their souls are united with divine grace, their bodies too are sanctified, and burn incandescent, and become themselves translucent, and are restored as more excellent, more precious by far, than other bodies.” Many of the saints were miracle workers while they were alive with their bodies being vehicles of divine grace. For example, when St. Peter walked through the streets of Jerusalem, when his shadow would fall on those who were sick, they would be healed (Acts 5:15-16). When the saints die, the grace of God which is within their bodies is manifested in various ways: some saints’ bodies do not decay; others, their bodies do decay yet their bones are fragrant; still others, their bodies and or their bones exude sweet smelling myrrh, etc. What is consistent though is that their relics are a continual source of miracles and healings. Their tombs and their graves are not a place of corruption and death, but of life.
In the Orthodox Church, the relics of the Saints have the utmost importance, because we experience God and His grace through them. The countless miracles and healings, which take place in and through the holy relics, are a certain proof of God’s existence and the Resurrection of Christ. In commenting about the holy relics, St. John Chrysostom said, “We must not only see the dust, nor think that this is just ashes and bones, but see the power of God seated beside them, the grace of the Spirit surrounding them, the glory of the heavenly light wrapping them around.” The power of God, the grace of the Holy Spirit exists in the holy relics. That is to say, they are not ordinary bones, but holy relics, which have God’s energy. We have here in the United States – in San Francisco, CA to be exact, an incorrupt saint, St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco. Ordinarily, to see a saint whose whole body has not decomposed, one would have to travel to Greece or Russia, for example. However, we have such a saint in the region of our own Metropolis. If you have not yet gone to venerate St. John, I encourage you to make the trip to San Francisco, just to see him. The miracles that take place through his holy relics and intercessory prayers happen continuously. As a priest in the San Francisco Bay area for ten years, I have witnessed first hand many miracles attributed to him. Venerating the relics of a saint draws us closer to Christ, and our faith is strengthened! The relics of the saints are therefore a loud, joyous proclamation of the Resurrection of Christ. They validate our faith and embolden us to proclaim: Christ is Risen!