In the center of our liturgical life, in the very center of that time which
we measure as a year, we find the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Resurrection is the appearance in this world, completely dominated by
time (and therefore by death), of a life that will have no end. The one who rose again from the dead does not die anymore.
In this world of ours, there appeared one morning someone who is beyond
death and yet in our time. Thus, Resurrection is the central theme of Christianity and it has been preserved in its purity in the Armenian Orthodox tradition.
The center, the day that gives meaning to all days and therefore to all
time, is that yearly commemoration of Christ's Resurrection at Easter. This is always the end and the beginning. We are always living after Easter, and we are always
going toward Easter.
Easter is the earliest Christian feast. The whole tone and meaning of the
liturgical life of the Church is contained in Easter, together with the subsequent fifty-day period, which culminates in the Feast of Pentecost, the coming down of
Holy Spirit upon the Apostles.
If we have a message, it is that message of Easter joy, which finds its
climax on Easter night. When we hear, "Christ Is Risen," then the night becomes in the terms of St. Gregory of Nyssa, "lighter than the day."
This is the secret strength, the real root of the Christian experience.
Only within the framework of this joy can we understand everything else.
