CHRIST IS RISEN!
Beloved Brothers in Christ,
Today we celebrate again the Holy Easter of the Resurrection of the Lord, Our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, in the heart of all the Orthodox Churches in the World.
It is a moment of supreme Glory and, simultaneously, a space of astonishing contradiction. If from one hand we are called to live the greatest and most sublime event ever seen in the cosmos, on the other hand we sadly verify that man, in particular, and society, in general, do not realize this same indelible gift which God offers to each man and woman, as well as to all the humanity.
Christ rises of the dead, today;
Christ defeats, in this glorious date, the death never up to that time won;
Christ grants us on this day the certainty of entering with Him in the Kingdom of the Heavens;
Christ rises, in this moment of full Liturgical non-temporality, from the beginning of the times until the Parusia, as the personal Saviour of each man and woman recognizing Him as the Saviour;
Christ announces and stands, today, the guarantee of eternity, which in the ancient Law had been given to man only as a promise;
Christ is the lively evidence of integral Loyalty to the Plan of God and meticulous Obedience in the fulfilment of His Saving Mission, independently of the changing circumstances of the man’s daily life.
What do we at present watch happening in our contemporary society? – It is enough for us the combination of events or any unexpected incident rising in our horizon and nothing that we promised yesterday, has any value tomorrow.
We promised to the person whom we married loyalty in the love and an immortal common life, until the death separates those united by God. But when the first obstacle is knocking at the door, we realize that what we promised yesterday, after all, was not serious nor true and much less eternal.
There is only a certainty becoming more and more real in the couple full communion of the earthly eternal life: it is the personified separation by the divorce, which is the corollary of the death of the love, not fed by acts of loyalty, availability, complicity or affectionate attention and dedication to the other, to whom we had guaranteed never to leave.
In the Church, we can equally watch to priests promising to God, before the People of God, dedication, love, self-denial and affection to the parochial or monastic communities until the death transport them to the eternal meeting with the Saviour. And what do we realize being happening?
– Some of them, to the end of some time, we can say it, after very little time, they leave the Priesthood in which they were endued by the Church;
They leave the flock they were charged of taking care and any circumstantial “reason” is a basis for the act of cowardice, treason and desertion from the burdens they had previously shouldered.
We can see abrupt and inopportune breaks appear, even among friends, whose friendship was considered as perpetually based and cemented in the innumerable evidences of so many lived and shared in common acts, several years along;
And they are so sudden, that often they become a space of such hate, envy and rivalry that we hardly can glimpse between declared enemies.
We are, unfortunately, in a time and in a century, in which everything is already packed up in a parcel with appropriate term of validity;
In our present time perishing and death are included in the tag we put – by mere complacency and indolence – in each practiced act we do.
Nowadays it is very difficult to find available men and women for assuming unconditional promises, besides the circumstances that could appear in the way they previously decided to tread.
Now this is not Christ's Testimony.
Christ did not turn away nor chose another route when the death on the Cross “circumstance” was set in His horizon.
Christ did not revolt against the extreme difficulty of His announced death;
Christ did not allow that the fulfilment of His undertaken Mission was put in question by the “circumstances” introduced to Him by the death in the Cross; and they were of different categories, from the physical pain to the ignominy, and human shame of passing by the most dishonourable death inflicted to a man.
The loudly cried out example, today, of the empty tomb is unconditionally, for us, a matter of being loyal to what we assume, no matter which circumstances may change our lives or whose mutations may reach us in the way we have to tramp.
Beloved Brothers,
What can exist more terrible than a love with a deadline; than a marriage with a deadline; than a father and a mother with a deadline; than a filial love with a deadline; than a priest with a deadline; than a monk or a nun with a deadline; than a male or female friend with a deadline?
God, Through His Word and Son’s Incarnation, in the Most Holy Virgin Mary’s bosom of the belly of the, His Birth, Announcement of Good New, Death and Resurrection, invites us to share with Him not a relationship of Love with a deadline but one of eternity.
God, by unforgettable and immeasurable love toward us, removes ourselves of the death meanders and consequently, of the perishing the same death was shutting in, of its limitations and contingencies and restores our “term of validity”… we start being able to live eternally, if we decide like so, accepting as a Saviour The Christ who, by the Resurrection, today goes out of the Tomb.
So, we have to let our acts, in all the sectors and activities of our life, be impregnated of the same love, in everything similar to the one of Christ.
In this way, we will not be any more of the race of vipers of those who let down the other ones;
We will not be any more of the vile lineage of the ones who escape and are hidden;
We will not be any more of that race that use, spend and discard those who were loved for a while;
It will not be any more a mediocre lineage of the ones who get tired of loving and serving always and forever;
We will not be any more of the vile ancestry of those who promised to be always with us, by our side, for the whole life, and abandon us in the first curve of a road that, suddenly, became winding and strenuous.
Beloved Brothers,
Easter is Sign, Voice and Invitation of Eternity, Completeness and Announcement of the end of all human circumstances.
From now on, from the Day of the Resurrection, there is no more suitability nor place for the ragged excuses and malevolent stratagems that we use so often to do what we want and feel like doing;
From this Glorious Easter date, the Lord’s Day of the Resurrection, there is only room – if we want to be serious and honest – to do what we should; and we should unconditionally love;
And serve without limitations;
And be loyal to all the ones we promised NEVER to leave;
And be in every one of our acts, gestures and glances, an example and image of Christ, Our Saviour and Master.
Beloved Brothers,
If we will try to live in this way, then we will be of the race of the ones who will enter in the Kingdom of the Heavens, where we will live with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, unto the ages of the ages. Amen.
TRULY HE IS RISEN!
+ JOÃO
ORTHODOX ARCHBISHOP OF BRAGA AND LISBON
METROPOLITAN PRIMATE OF PORTUGAL
SPAIN AND ALL BRAZIL
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