By Fr. George Dorbarakis
“We celebrate the death of death, the overthrow of Hades, the beginning of another life, eternal life, and leaping for joy we hymn the Cause of these things, the only blessed God of our Fathers and most glorious” (Ode 7 of the Resurrection Canon).
One of the most well-known and beloved troparia of the Resurrection Canon is the above hymn, not only because of the immediacy of its meanings, but also because of the particular love that the Holy Elder Porphyrios of Kavsokalyva had for it — everyone knows the dialogue that took place between the Saint and the late professor of cardiology at the University of Athens, George Papazachos, precisely about this troparion. What does the Holy Hymnographer and great Father of the Church, John of Damascus, tell us? We are called to hymn and glorify our only mighty and all-glorious God, the One who alone was blessed and foretold by the Patriarchs of the Old Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ, because by His Resurrection:
– First, He put death to death and overthrew the kingdom of Hades — "we celebrate the death of death." Death, therefore, no longer truly exists, since the One who is the source of life entered into its depths, into what we call Hades. Death, which came as an addition to human life because of sin — God did not create death; rather, immortality was the original calling of man — has been abolished and destroyed. And although it still appears to exist even after the Resurrection of the Lord, it does so only in its biological dimension for a time: until the time of His Second Coming, which potentially is an event of every moment. The last things, with Christ, have already entered human history, and the believer lives with this expectation and longing: “Come, Lord Jesus!” “Maranatha.”
– Second, (through the abolition and trampling down of death) He brought a new way of life for man, which is eternal life. Eternity, in our faith, is not understood simply as an endless state that follows biological death; rather, it is understood primarily as the life that begins from the moment a person believes in Christ and relates to Him experientially, within His living Body, the Church. He Himself revealed it: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” The knowledge of Christ and of God as revealed by Him — not intellectual, but experiential in love, proven by the keeping of His holy commandments — this is eternal life. Therefore, the beginnings of this life are found here and now, and it continues beyond our biological end.
In other words, people of the Church, who have understood that through selfless love, according to the example of the Lord, they now journey in this world, already live eternal life and taste its fruits as joy, as peace, as long-suffering, as faith, as gentleness, as self-control, and so on. For this reason, the fear of death no longer exists — what fear can remain where its cause no longer exists, especially when it has been swallowed up by life itself? With the Lord it was revealed clearly that the only true reality is life, and indeed as His life. This life we do not see, unfortunately, in ourselves who are weak and lukewarm Christians, but in our saints, who are our models and a continual call to repentance — such as Saint Porphyrios, whom we mentioned, who insisted particularly on the word “leaping.”
When you truly live the Resurrection, when you realize what Christ has brought into human life, then the only thing you can do is feel the leapings of joy, which that Holy Elder likened to the joyful jumping of little goats when they find their food and are near their mother. These are, we believe, the leapings spoken of by many Fathers of the Church, coming from the living water that Christ gives to the hearts of His faithful, according to His unfailing promise: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” May the Lord and His saints grant us this orientation in our life, so that even in the smallest measure we may feel the leapings of His saving presence!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.