I extend felicitations to all of you for the Feast of Resurrection which the Coptic Church and the Christians of the East celebrated on Sunday 16/ 4. I also extend felicitations for Eid Al-Fitr celebrated by our Muslim brothers all over the world. We plead for God to keep Egypt safe, peaceful and blessed, and to grant peace to the world.
While celebrating the resurrection, we remember that God endowed man with what distinguishes him from all other creatures: an immortal soul that never dies. As for the body that dies, it will return, by the unlimited power of God, to life again and rise again. Therefore, human life does not end with death, which everybody will pass through. Rather, death has become a bridge on which all human beings cross to endless eternal life. Here, I recall the words of the Thrice Beatified Pope Shenouda III: “We may say that the most important thing in the resurrection is what follows it. The resurrection indicates that human life has an extension in the other world, and that death is just a stage in human life, or just a bridge connecting two lives, one is earthly and the other is heavenly.”
Religions have agreed on the truth of the resurrection, as all human beings will stand before the throne of God on the Day of Judgment, each presenting an account for all his deeds – good or evil – followed by the eternal fate of man. However, there is a claim that human beings will perish and end upon their death, there will be no resurrection of the dead and no eternal life! In fact, these ideas are thrown by Satan, the enemy of good, to fight us and make people indulged in the world lusts and pleasures, abandoning the fate of their eternity, so they perish with Satan in eternal torment. Actually, the rejecting stance adopted by the atheist philosophers against the reality of the resurrection is not a recent newborn thought, but rather it is spread in all times. We see Lord Christ affirming the truth of the resurrection, when a group of Sadducees who do not believe in resurrection came to him, debating him about a matter related to it, and He answered them: “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven. But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” It is unreasonable for the living God to attribute Himself to people who have perished and are no longer mentioned!
Lord Christ often emphasized in His teachings the truth of the resurrection of the dead, saying: “For the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” He also describes the horrible Day of Judgment, saying: “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world… Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels… And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” In addition, the truth of the resurrection is confirmed through the raising and resurrection of people from death, such as whom Lord Christ raised, like the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain and Lazarus, who was raised four days after his death. The Apostle Fathers affirmed the truth of the resurrection, and St. Paul the Apostle mentions: “I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection [e]of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.”
All attempts to distort and deny the reality of the resurrection are, in fact, aimed at distracting man’s mind from being prepared and ready for eternal life. Happy feastto all of you and…stories about beautiful Egypt never end!
The General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center
العربية
