† Macarie,

By the grace and mercy of God, Bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Northern Europe,

To all beloved brethren: fellow servants of the altar, members of the monastic communities, and to the faithful people of God – grace, peace, serenity and joy from the Crucified and Resurrected Christ, together with my fatherly and brotherly embrace, and my blessing with the Paschal greeting:

Christ is risen!

Right-worshipping Christians,

Two thousand years ago, Christ – having suffered the utmost agony of self-renunciation and desertion in the Garden of Gethsemane; having wilfully accepted, noble and dignified, the disgraceful arrest, the unlawful trial, tortures and unjust death sentence; having received in His body the wounds of beatings, of thorns and nails; having died on the Cross while praying for His enemies, descended into Hades in order to free from the tyranny of Satan all the righteous people since our forebearers Adam and Eve. Smitten and killed like he most despised of men (cf. Isaiah 53, 5 and the following), Christ – simultaneously „in the tomb with His body, in the hell with His soul like a God, in the Paradise with the thief and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, He the uncircumscribable one” – descends as Conqueror into the very dwelling place of the devil – the father of deceit and killer of men. Despised and mocked by those who perceived His salvific work as a threat, He was welcomed in hell as the Messiah, the long-awaited Christ announced by the Old Testament prophets and righteous. While on the surface, the scribes, the pharisees, the soldiers, the guards and the enraged mob believed they were „celebrating” the killing of Jesus and were abolishing His preaching and work in Israel, in the depths of the earth and hidden from the eyes of the unfaithful, the harrowed hell was trembling and the devil lost his grip on the prey which he had thought was his in eternity.

Since then, for more than two thousand years, we have been chanting the triumphant hymn of the Resurrection on every Liturgy and especially on the great feast of Easter. For over two millennia – despite the epidemics, earthquakes, wars, invasions, pillage and plunder, murder and various forms of slavery afflicting mankind –, we have remembered that Christ has conquered – from within and forever – hell, death, corruption and, moreover, has made us partakers of his final victory and of the divine nature (cf. II Peter 1, 4).

How, then, can these two realities be reconciled? On the one hand the incessant and increasingly terrifying prevalence of death and decay in the world, all the suffering, all this distress, and on the other hand the victory of Christ and those who believe in Him?

Beloved brother, beloved sister,

The victory of Christ, then and now, took place in the unseen reality invisible to this world, it was hidden and mystical. Then and now, the world was and continues to be ruled by the evil powers (cf. I John 5, 19): cruel tyrants and sociopathic imperators, wolves in sheep’s clothing, manipulated madding crowds, brutal, inhumane soldiers and guards, all join in a devilish dance on Adam’s grave on the Golgotha and shamelessly shout to the Crucified One: Come down from the Cross so that we may believe in You!  And because Christ is still on the cross, giving Himself to the Father as liturgical sacrifice in order to offer a chance for salvation to all, including His enemies, they turn away and reject the Good Tidings of the Gospel. And Christ continues to suffer in any man, in any woman, in any child, in any human soul carrying the burden of injustice and wickedness of a world governed by the evil one. But know, beloved brother and beloved sister, that despite this ongoing moral degradation, in the realm of the unseen spiritual reality, we are already victorious if we remain Christ’s friends. In the spiritual realm of His Church, a new Kingdom and a new world are created to supplant the world dominated by evil. Then the „new heaven and new earth” will emerge (Revelation 21, 1). This new Kingdom is the Heavenly Jerusalem, to be fully and visibly instated (cf. Revelation 21, 10-27), on His Second Coming when Christ will return as Lord and Righteous Judge, making all things right and finally ushering in the „satisfaction” demanded by His detractors, however not as they expect it to be…

Now, beloved brother, beloved sister, is a time for self-sacrifice, for taking up the cross, for endurance. This is how we follow Christ. This is how we fulfil our calling revealed in the Gospel. This is how we prove ourselves to be His friends. This is the time for unwavering belief in God’s goodness and mercy, in His justice and truth. The more this world denies them, the better we understand they are true, lasting, and alive. The greater is the world’s resistance to the Gospel, to the Cross, to Christ, the clearer we see approaching the moment of the final confrontation between good and evil.

Dearly beloved,

It has become increasingly evident, in recent years, that the „secret power of evil” is at work in the world (II Thessalonians 2, 7). Crisis after crisis afflict the world as we know it. Economic crisis, moral crisis, social crisis, pandemic crisis, military crisis. Yesterday the entire world was a quarantined hospital; today, the whole world is threatened by war. These scourges assault everything that man has created throughout the history.
Yourself, dearly beloved brother or sister, do you not feel like Master Manole of the Romanian ballad? Don’t you put so much effort into building a family, a lifestyle, a better future, maybe even a better society? And don’t you feel as if what you so painstakingly build today, is undermined or even shattered by unexpected disaster?

It seems we have never been more unsettled, more disturbed than we are now. These, beloved brother and beloved sister, are not edifying times but distressing times. Maybe we should now awaken to the fact that our struggle is vain, because it pursues exterior, transient, earthly things. Actually, dear brother and dear sister, absolute peace and safety can never be achieved in this world and in history. And when the unseen war becomes a visible one, it is time – more than ever – to recollect ourselves, to „withdraw” within our own selves, in the solitude of our hearts, and there grow in Christ, and strive to become citizens of His Kingdom. What we edify in our hearts will stand. What we edify and build together with Christ, hell itself cannot destroy!

Beloved brother, beloved sister, let us not deceive ourselves. There can be no peace in this world, as long as Christ is scorned and defied. There can be no peace in a world that issues laws against the Gospel. „Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked” (Galathians 6, 7). Peace shall be instated when God’s justice reigns over everyone and everything. In such times, under such circumstances, let us be like the myrrh-bearing women who, despite the overwhelming sorrow for the Crucifixion and the terrible display of antichristic enmity, never left the side of Lord Jesus Christ but stayed with Him to the end. Amen!

Your fellow celebrant, father, brother and friend, devoted supporter and fervent supplicant to God,

† Bishop Macarie

Issued in the Episcopal Residence in Stockholm, the Kingdom of Sweden,
on the Feast of the Lord’s Resurrection 2022.