Every Sunday, every day celebrating the Resurrection, reminds us again and again of God’s love for people.

On the first page of the first book of the Bible, we read that God created light in this world on the first day.  Farther on, we read that He created the rest of Creation on other days, and that finally, on the seventh day, He rested from all of His works, and that he blessed that day as the day of rest for man.  Thus it was in the time of the Old Testament: God’s chosen people celebrated Saturday, the seventh day of the week, the day of rest, the Sabbath.

In the New Testament, we are told that the Son of God, living on earth, and taking on Himself death on the Cross for us, lay in the tomb on the Sabbath, on the day of rest, and that on the first day of the week (the day God created light in this world), He rose up out of the tomb, resurrected from the dead.  For that reason, we, the New Testament Church of Christ, now celebrate not Saturday, the seventh day, but rather Sunday, the first day of the week, the Day of Resurrection, the day Christ rose from the dead.

It is on that day that we Christians gather together to give thanks to God for His good works, first and foremost for the sacrifice (death) and Resurrection of His Son.  It is primarily on that day that the Church gathers together before God to conduct its service to God, its “communal matter,” with the entire Church offering the bloodless sacrifice of the Liturgy. On that day, when we gather together in His Name, the Lord’s close proximity to us and His Second Coming again, which is to be the culmination of our salvation, become especially clear to us.

If we look at the world around us, we sense again and again how true are the words of the Apostle St. John the Theologian, that “…the whole world lieth in wickedness...” (I John 5: 19). If we look at ourselves, we sense our own weakness.  If someone has committed a sin against the Lord God, if he has but once agreed to fall into the pit of untruth, he cannot of his own accord climb out, no matter how earnestly he might try.  But one hope remains to him: hope in the saving hand of God, hope in receiving help from His grace.  That grace has entered into the world.  The Son of God took our human flesh upon Himself; He died and was Resurrected in order to make His life incarnate in us, to give us, despite all of our weaknesses, an opportunity for holy life in Him.  In our gloomy days, the possibility of such new life is the sole true joy.  Every seven days, we are reminded of that joy given us by Christ on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day of Resurrection.  We receive the joy of new life through the Holy Church of Christ, through its mysteries. It is given to all – to sinners and the righteous, poor and rich, young and old alike — to whoever has the desire, the thirst for spiritual renewal.

However, that grace of new life is given to those who unite with one another in the bond of mutual love.  Christ does not come to individuals who are in conflict with one another. Christ wants to come to everyone, wants to unite everyone in one Body, Whose Head He Himself is.

This is why our association with one another in love, in prayer, in the Mysteries, and in the Liturgy, is so important.  This is why it is so important that every Sunday be a day when we gather together to thank God for His love and to strengthen our bond of mutual love in Christ.  The earliest Christians lived by one principal rule – to always be together: “And all that believed were together, and had all things common…” (Acts 2: 44).  Let us keep that rule in mind as well.  Without such mutual sharing in all circumstances, in spiritual benefits and, where necessary, in material ones as well, everything falls apart, and we are left with nothing but the general gloominess we see in the world.  May that not be so among us.  Amen.