PATRIARCHAL ENCYCLICAL ON THE OCCASION OF HOLY PASCHA

† B A R T H O L O M E W

BY GOD’S MERCY

ARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE – NEW ROME

AND ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH

TO THE ENTIRE PLENITUDE OF THE CHURCH:

GRACE, PEACE, AND MERCY FROM CHRIST, RISEN IN GLORY

* * *

Most honourable brother Hierarchs and blessed children in the Lord,

Having arrived, through fasting, prayer, and solemnity, at the radiant and all-festal day of Holy Pascha, we hymn and glorify the world-saving Resurrection of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which marks the manifest victory of life over death, renews all creation, and opens to humanity the way of deification by grace. The Church of Christ preserves the paschal experience in her liturgical life, in the labours of the Saints and Martyrs of the faith, in the eschatological impulse of monasticism, in the proclamation of the Gospel “to the ends of the earth,” in theology and the ecclesial arts, in the good witness of the faithful in the world, in the culture of love and solidarity, and in the immovable certainty that evil does not have the final word in history.

The Resurrection of the Lord is lived as a Christ-bestowed freedom, which inspires, nourishes, and strengthens the creative…