To All Faithful in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!
In our world of uncertainties, doubt and despair it seems very difficult to have hope. Hope that really carries us. Hope on what we can rely on. And this is true, that for many people they do not know what the next day may bring to them.
As Christians – followers of Jesus – we have totally different status. We do not know either what troubles and problems maybe ahead. But we know – we can go through them with Our Saviour and Redeemer! And we know that the last word is not given by this world around us, but by God, who became a man and lived among us, was crucified, but He was raised from dead and sits at the right hand of God the Father! As Jesus was resurrected so we will be too!
I want to conclude with the words of Saint Chrysostom –
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown! Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen! Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life reigns! Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb! For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept. To Him be glory and might unto the ages of ages. Amen.
CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!
++++ His Beatitude Dr. Heigo Ritsbek, MA, MDiv, DMin, LittD, DD Patriarch of The Anglocatholic Church
Dear Brothers in Christ, On Quinquagesima Sunday, holy Church, responding to the Gospel passage from Luke 18, entered upon the upward pilgrimage of Lent, the journey to the holy city Jerusalem there to witness the fulfillment of all things written of the Son of man by the prophets. This hero journey (to borrow a term from Joseph Campbell) is set before us in order to reveal our ultimate destiny as followers of the Lord Christ. In it Christians find the meaning of life in the Lord expressed in the accomplishments worked by God the Father in Jesus the Son, worked for the sake of our salvation. He is delivered up, treated with disdain, tortured and sent to a cruel death that is the result of worldly judgment and spiritual blindness. This great journey is designed for us as a vehicle for the reception of true sight and for the gift of a faith that saves as it reveals the well-spring of eternal life implanted in us by God, gifted us that death have not the final word. The triumphant entry into the Holy City, the climax of this upward movement, finds meaning in John’s gospel in its immediate prelude, the anointing of the Lord by Mary of Bethany, an act of preparation for his sacrificial death that will become the ultimate cause of his glorification. We are privileged in this journey to stand alongside our Lord in his hour, that decisive time when He as a grain of wheat falling to the ground in death rises up as abundant fruitfulness in the family of his Church. Here we find articulated the ultimate challenge of discipleship – to serve Him is to follow Him seeking to be where He is as a suffering servant worthy of future honor. He leads the way. We, counting the cost of discipleship must follow Him. He, free from any sin, leads us, sinners, along the course of the hero journey that reveals the Father’s solution for the troublesome state that lies buried at the heart of fallen humanity, that has caused the aweful curse placed upon the ground, the toil of life and the return to the primal dust in death. This challenging solution believers proclaim as they participate daily or weekly in the eucharistic celebration. Often, this proclamation in its rhythmic regularity, seems to become ordinary, a statement of fact rather than a divine transformative gift of love. Yet He is truly blessed that comes to us in the name of the Lord. Perhaps like the crowds that thronged the streets of Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday we acclaim Him by simply quoting a verse from Psalm 118, a verse whose deep inner significance has become forgotten through familiarity. Yet in each celebration of the Sacred Mysteries, we find ourselves alone before God, alone and at the same time within the tumultuous crowds whose Hosannas turn to jeers five days later at the Place called the Skull when they came to be entertained by the spectacle of a cruel death or perhaps even finding ourselves standing in union with those who from fear withdrew afar off watching in horror the tragedy of the death of God at the hands of those whom He in love had fashioned and given the gift of life. When we first came to Jesus in the waters of baptism, was this what we came for? Was it for the triumphal entry, or the aweful desolation of Golgatha, the hurried burial and the descent into the depths of the infernal world? In our annual lenten pilgrimage, as in the whole course of our lives, we have been led here, and continue to be led by grace to the portal of transformation. Here, at the foot of the Cross of Jesus, here we come to a point of lucid revelation, to a knowledge of the depths of the love of God, to the fact that the Anointed One is our Passover, our vehicle of transformation. His sacred Blood is smeared on the lintel of our death so that the destroying angel will pass us by, that is, if we enter in heart and mind into the paschal celebration as the meal of life by partaking of the Lamb of God whose flesh is roasted in death over the fires of hell burning below the cross of ultimate humiliation, accompanying this with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth and the bitter herbs. This strange feast of life we must consume in haste as a people ready to journey with their Lord, as those moved to remembrance and worship, as those willing to make their lives anew as a living festal proclamation of Christ crucified, risen, ascended and glorified, gone from us in order to prepare a place for us. In his death, Christ cries out through the long procession of years since that fateful day, calling to us ‘ Will you take up your cross and follow Me? ‘ Will you accept the risk of faith that you may come to that road upon which the redeemed walk? ‘ ‘ See, my yoke is easy and my burden is light! ‘ For many today this turning point in human history seems to have lost its compelling truth. For many the challenge of transformation is simply too much to undertake when they are being actively seduced by the tinsel charms of this old world, seduced into believing that this life is all there is. Suffering, rejection, pain and sorrow are indeed a hard sell, as is future reward when we believe that we have it all right now. Yet for us, here lies our hope, a hope that is counter-cultural, that bids us turn from this world in a setting of the mind on things divine not on things human. It is significant that the evangelist Mark’s Jesus first fortells his death and resurrection in chapter 8. There the saving kingdom event is introduced and contextualized by the story of the feeding of the four thousand and completed in the opening of chapter 9 with the Transfiguration narrative, the mystery of faith being found in the progressive movement from divine feeding to divine self revelation. When we link this to the evangelist John’s story of Jesus and the Woman of Samaria we find another clue. The woman invites the people of her city to ‘ Come and see a man who told me everything. ‘ When we come and see the Man we find that his disciples are more concerned that He eat something!, that is, with his humanity. His acts of forgiveness and his radical teachings, these did not yet seem to engage them. Jesus, however, transforms their understanding of food from bodily nurture to doing of the will of the Father and thus completing his work. So it must be for us who follow after and undertake the heavy burden of discipleship. Holy Church begins to live her proclamation of the Easter victory primarily through the affirmation of faith, that is, in a life that is a confession of truth in word and in deed that the lives of those who come up to Jerusalem reveal. So we preach says Paul, so we believe. The triad of preaching – believing – and living – these form the Church of Jesus around the living presence of her Lord, these based on the triad at the core of our proclamation – the truth of the Cross – the Burial, and the Resurrection, this mystery of the atoning death and saving resurrection encompassing the truth about the life He came to bring, a passing from one form of existence to another, a life whose vitality and permanence far transcends the limiting barriers of that which we call earthly life revealing an expanding newness, a breakthrough into the eternity of being that is God with whom is the ‘ fountain of life ‘ and in whom ‘ we see light. ‘ Psalm 36 Dear brothers in Christ, Easter teaches us we must turn to the truly living One, He who has life in Himself through the Father. Life is thus an indwelling relationship, a knowledge that is ours as gift, that flows out through the incarnate Logos, that is made by Him as a light that lightens all people. As those chosen by our Lord for ministry and leadership in the fellowship of his one Body the Church, we must be willing to follow our Lord along his freely-willed path of suffering. We must be willing to be moved well beyond the limits of the intellect and worldly success, moved into the very life of God, into a trinitarian sense of the resurrection of the Son by the Father, itself the source of the out-poured power of the Spirit. God has already sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, already placed the cry of Abba on our lips as a cause for giving glory to the Father. Like our Lord as recorded in John 17, our vocations call us to a special act of selfconsecration, to a priestly ministry after the perfect model He sets before us, to a kind of withdrawal from the world that His mission and ministry may be revealed to the world in all truth through our lesser efforts. We are thus called to a humbling of self, to a surrender that is of the essence of our Lord’s servant ministry, to a dedication of our lives to his command ‘ Follow Me. ‘ As we again celebrate the Easter victory, we are called to re-affirm our commitment to live through Him, to live from Grace, to allow it to refashion our individual existences and ministries as proclamations of the victory of our God who Himself came in our flesh that we might live through Him. We are in a sense the garden of the Lord in whose center is the wine press of life. We take the fruitful increase of our catholic planting and offer it up as that pleasant planting in which He is well pleased. Thus, our hour has come, the hour when our lives must show forth that eternal life which is the knowledge of the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, He in whose glorious resurrection we have been brought out into a spacious place. Thanks be to God! +++ David Smith Patriarch Coadjutor of the Anglocatholic Church His Eminence the Most Reverend David A. Smith, Titular Bishop of Antioch in Pisidia and Primate of All North America
Some photos of the Palm Sunday Liturgy celebrated in France by His Eminence, The Most Reverend Dr. Raphael Marie Villiere, DD, Primate of Europe of The Anglocatholic Church.
On April 14th, 2019, there was Solemn Mass of Palm Sunday cebrated at Saint Mary of the Angels Oratory in Graceville, Australia by His Eminence, The Most Reverend Dr. Ian Charles Adrian, DipTh, LicTh, AssTh, DD, Primate of Australia and All Oceania of The Anglocatholic Church.
On April 12, 2019 – His Beatitude, The Most Reverend Dr. Heigo Ritsbek, MA, MDiv, DMin, LittD, DD; The Patriarch of The Anglocatholic Church, received many hundreds of good wishes and congratulations at his 68th birthday from many people around the world; among them many Bishops of The Anglocatholic Church, and other churches around the world; The President of the European Baptist Union; the former President of Estonian Baptist Union, Dean of Tallinn of The Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church; clergy from Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Orthodox, Pentecostal and other churches in Estonia; by The Bible Society of Estonia; members of The Parliament of The Republic of Estonia; members of The Estonian Grand Priory of The International Knighthood of Saint Michael the Archangel; The Union of Noble Knights of Reval; Estonian Heritage Society; and from many-many other people. Thank you very much! Thank you and be blessed!
For health reasons His Beatitude, The Most Reverend Dr. Heigo Ritsbek, MA, MDiv, DMin, LittD, DD; The Patriarch of The Anglocatholic Church will be on sabbatical from July 15, 2019 until July 15, 2020. During this time the Active Patriarch will be His Eminence, The Most Reverend Dr. David Smith, BMus, MMus, DD, Patriarch Coadjutor of The Anglocatholic Church.
Your Beatitude, how to describe the first three years of your communion?
Certainly three years is a short time to come to some very deep conclusions. But I think that it shows that we are building still the basis for a communion of faithful from Conservative Old Catholic, Anglican and other background Christians in several countries.
How large is your Church just now?
We have 31 bishops, 208 priests, and 235 deacons – total 474 clergymen in 25 countries of the world with 143 parishes and 22,201 faithful members. The majority of our church is in Africa. Totally we have twelve archdioceses and seventeen dioceses.
What makes you most happy in your ministry as the Patriarch of The Anglocatholic Church?
Several things, but the joy of ministry by our clergy makes me really happy. And several bishops who are bringing in new people and educating new clergy and sending messages of growth in several parts of the world. Also – the faithfulness of the leadership in very difficult situations and great loyalty to the Patriarch.
Now you are making preparations to The Convocation of The Holy Synod of The Anglocatholic Church in Toronto, Canada this June. What would be the main topics of discussion there?
As The Holy Synod is the only legislative organ in our church, we will have there different decisions to make. Maybe one of the most important one will be the revision of our Canon Law, so after The Convocation we will have The Code of Revised Canon Law 2019. Also many other aspects of church life – liturgy, theological education, church structure, missions etc. will be discussed.
What is making you most sad looking at the current trends in the Christian world?
Surely the liberal theology, which has changed the understanding of the Holy Scripture, the Creeds of the Church, the first Councils of the Christian Church and Christian ethics and to be honest – the whole Christian Theology. More and more clergy are writing to me and we are incardinating new clergy, who simply cannot serve with pure heart in the denominations and communions where there the female clergy, gay clergy, and gay marriages are accepted and propagated.
So you have no female clergy nor gay clergy?
No.
What do you see in future for your Communion?
I see that there will be more Conservative Anglican, Old Catholic and other clergy who simply cannot accept the liberal movements and the ultra-liberal theology and they find among us a real home. I surely see new church members, who thru evangelism have found their way to our church. We have a small beginnings, but we want to stand faithfully next to our brothers and sisters in Christ in larger communions to proclaim Christian message, as it was given to the Early Church by Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ himself, and was proclaimed thru all the ages.
