THE EASTER MESSAGE OF ARCHBISHOP KHAJAG BARSAMIAN -Primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America

Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (MATTHEW 26:69-75)

EASTER IS OUR GREAT STORY OF VICTORY, our assurance of triumph. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful are promised to share in that victory.

But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship. Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.

The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?

Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.

How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.

Sainthood has been a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church lately. In the month following Easter, we will mark the anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged in hundreds of years. The canonization was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.

But now, after a year of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, and with Easter again before us, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.

The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.

The miracle of Easter is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.

It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Easter story shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us. Let that thought guide us this Easter, as we greet Christ’s resurrection for the first time in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the truth of those immortal words:

Krisdos haryav ee merelotz! Orhnyal eh harootiunun Krisdosee! Christ is risen from the dead! Blessed is the resurrection of Christ!