Holy Week is a special period for believers, because they remember the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ for the sins of the whole world, said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.
“Holy Week is a time when believers remember the last days of the earthly life of Jesus Christ day after day in Orthodox churches,” Metropolitan Hilarion said in the Church and the World program, reports the press service of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media.
The metropolitan added that the last week before Pascha is “a very special time, when we follow the events that happened to the Lord Jesus Christ, when He was taken for judgment, crucified on the Cross, when He was dying for the sins of the whole world and of every man, and, of course, when He rose from the dead.”
“The things that He warned about took place, the things He predicted many times, but even His closest disciples could not believe it. Even after He rose from the dead, not everyone believed it right away,” Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk noted.
Recalling that the Resurrection of Christ is “the core point of the Christian faith,” the metropolitan quoted the words of the Apostle Paul: “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14).
“Therefore, of course, the feast of the Resurrection of Christ – Pascha – is the main feast day of the entire church year. We prepare for this feast day for 49 days: these are six weeks of Great Lent and Holy Week,” Metropolitan Hilarion concluded.
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