Dear faithful people,
Great Lent marked the days of prayer, spirituality and reflection, a time for meditation, penitence and repentance to rejuvenate our spirits and strengthen our faithfulness, piousness and love for one another.
The genuine desire and the honorable aspirations of God-willing brotherly love, solidarity and support are a powerful and vital force that will help us to overcome our hardships, keeping the independent and peaceful foundations of our Homeland unshaken. The doors of God’s mercy and blessings will be widely opened before our personal and national life if we keep God’s commandments.
We are entering Holy Week. With the sacrament of the church services, through contemplation and empathy we witness the last events of Our Lord’s earthly life – Christ’s passion, His Crucifixion and Death, also His miraculous Resurrection, granting humanity a resurrected life on Earth and eternal life in the Heavenly Kingdom.
Beloved faithful children in Armenia and the Diaspora, let the message of Holy Week become a call for all of us to reinforce our path to God, rejecting unworthy thoughts, words and deeds, so that we can accept the good news of Our Lord’s life- giving Resurrection with a pure heart, and a hopeful and joyful spirit. Let us make the effort to have the Christian spirit manifested everywhere in our reality, valuing honesty and devotion of the spirit, righteousness, sympathy and mercy, and become closer to God. Let us pray for each other, extending our joint prayers for the Syrian people, the Armenians in Kessab and all the Syrian Armenians, and offer them our support so that our brothers and sisters in Kessab, who were displaced by armed extremists, can overcome the hardships and return to their homes and continue living peacefully with God’s will.
From the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin we extend Our Pontifical blessings, wishing from the bottom of Our heart that the graces of Our Lord’s Holy Resurrection descend upon our lives, and reinforced with divine blessings, that we always remain loyal children of God, and devoted children of our nation and Holy Church. May the heaven- sent peace be established in all the corners of the world, staying strong in our independent Homeland and in the lives of our people dispersed throughout the Diaspora.
May Our Lord Jesus Christ’s grace, love and mercy be with us and all for now and forevermore. Amen.
