Professor Jaroslav Pelikan’s statement drew my attention: “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen, nothing else matters”. I loved to know more about him who said it. My reading revealed to me that he was a Lutheran pastor who converted with his wife to Orthodoxy in 1998, that is, eight years prior to his death (Pelikan does not say that he converted, but rather that he returned). He was received into the Orthodox Church at St. Vladimir’s seminary in Crestwood, New York. The value of this statement to me is not limited to the fact that, in saying it, Pelikan appears to be faithful to what Paul said in chapter 15 of his first letter to the Corinthian Church. Its value also is that he said it just before his death. This is heaven when it decides to open, and send down some of its gifts to us! There is no gift more precious than the discovery that Pascha is everything.
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