Χριστός Ανέστη! Ἀληθῶς Aνέστη! Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

Today, Sunday, April 20, 2025, is Great and Holy Pascha, the day of the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, our great day of hope and renewal. This is the center of our Faith and the cause of our joy: Christ is risen from the dead, by death, trampling down upon death, and to those in the tombs He has granted life!

The Resurrection of our Lord and Savior is an opportunity for each of us to renew our faith, restore our hope, and increase our love, intensifying our prayer and work to bring the light of our Holy Orthodox Faith and the wisdom of the Holy and Great Church of Christ to a world that more than ever needs to hear His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s message of peace and reconciliation. Please continue to pray for peace in Ukraine and the Middle East, for the preservation and flourishing of our natural environment, and for harmony and mutual respect to dawn wherever there is strife between peoples.

Just as we have a great deal for which to be thankful, we also look forward with immense excitement and anticipation to the return our deeply beloved Ecumenical Patriarch to the United States this September. While His All-Holiness is blessing our nation with his presence, he will receive the Templeton Prize, a prestigious international award that will be bestowed in honor of his “pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, bringing together people of different faiths to heed a call for stewardship of creation.”

Then in October, during our annual Archon Weekend, the 2025 Athenagoras Human Rights Award will be presented to the Hon. Michael R. Pompeo, the 70th Secretary of State of the United States of America. The Award will be presented on Saturday, October 18, at the Athenagoras Human Rights Award black-tie banquet at the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel in New York City.

With these events and much more to look forward to, my beloved brother Archons, Archon families, and friends of the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (AEP), let us continue to fight the good fight and continue to give of ourselves in order to serve the needs of the Holy and Great Mother Church. We do so as part of a magnificent fellowship, led by His All-Holiness, the longest-serving and one of the most consequential Ecumenical Patriarchs in the history of the Church. We are likewise thankful for the wise and Christ-centered leadership His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America. As Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, we are deeply blessed and highly fortunate to be able to assist in the ministries of these holy and visionary hierarchs. We likewise express our gratitude on this Feast of Feasts to the Holy Eparchial Synod and to our treasured Spiritual Advisor, the Rev. Protopresbyter Alexander Karloutsos.

Maria and our entire family join me in wishing all of you and your beloved families a most joyous Pascha, resplendent with the eternal and ever-brilliant light of the Risen Lord.

Χριστός Ανέστη! Ἀληθῶς Aνέστη!

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

Христос воскрес! Воістину воскрес!

!المسيح قام! حقا قام al-Masīḥ qām! Ḥaqqan qām!

Yours in the service of our Holy Mother Church,