The Serbian Orthodox Church to its spiritual children on Easter 2024
PORPHYRIUS
by the grace of God, the Orthodox Archbishop of Peć, the Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovica and the Patriarch of Serbia, with all the bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church - the clergy, monks and all the sons and daughters of our holy Church: grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit, with a joyful Easter greeting:
HAPPY EASTER!
When you descended to death, Life Immortal,
then you died with the radiance of Divinity,
and when you resurrected the dead from the beginning,
all the heavenly powers shouted to You:
Giver of life, Christ our God, glory to You!
Pronouncing boldly and unwaveringly the words of this divinely inspired hymn, let us join the holy forefathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, reverends, righteous men, confessors and teachers of the faith, as well as all the choirs of angels, who today in heaven celebrate the holy and life-giving Resurrection of the Lord! Let us hurry with the myrrh-bearing women to the empty tomb of Christ, so that we too can hear the words of the angel, filled with eternal joy:
"Time to cry stopped; don't cry
but announce the Resurrection to the apostles!"
Indeed, tears have disappeared from the faces of those who were under the power of death, the hope of all believers has been fulfilled and the hearts of those who mourn have been comforted. "Let heaven rejoice and let earth rejoice!" Christ is risen and life reigns!" - the annunciation words of St. John Chrysostom, the great preacher of the Church of the Risen Christ, resound through heaven and earth for ever and ever.
Our dear spiritual children, all sacred books of the Old and New Testament point to the truth, the truth about the Resurrection. The divinely inspired psalmist David prophesied about the suffering and Resurrection of Christ in these words:
"How many and evil troubles you have shown me."
and recovering you revived me
and from the depths of the earth you brought me up again" (Ps. 70, 20).
The great Old Testament prophet Isaiah, whom the God-bearing Fathers of the Church rightly call the Old Testament evangelist, clearly sees in advance the suffering and Resurrection of Christ and writes: "And he carried our sicknesses and took our infirmities upon himself, and we thought that he was wounded, that God was beating him and torments. But he would be wounded for our transgressions, beaten for our iniquities; the punishment was on him for the sake of our peace and we were healed by his wound. [...] And he would be placed among the criminals, but he himself bears the sins of many and prays for the criminals" (Is. 53, 4 - 5 and 12).
Together with the great Isaiah, in a mysterious and amazing way, we also become witnesses of all this that has happened for our sake. And we are not only witnesses, but also participants in this miraculous secret, celebrating today the Feast of Feasts. That is why on this great and bright day we rejoice in the Truth, we rejoice because death has been defeated in the encounter with the Living, Incarnate God. After all, it is not strange that people in our South often call Easter Easter, and in Greece Lambri, which means Bright Day. Everything we do for the sake of good, every toil, sacrifice and self-immolation, every sacrifice, every tear and every pain endured gained meaning in eternity through the triumph of life over death, the Resurrection of the Lord. Nevertheless, even on these joyous holidays, we witness the inconsolable cries of mothers for injured children, children for injured parents, brothers and sisters, women for lost husbands, and that cry tears the chests of members of many nations, including our own, Serbian. people. Violence is also committed outside of wars, because in the time we live in, even the absence of war - and war, unfortunately, is always there - is not a guarantee of true peace; crimes and violence have become part of everyday life. Women, whom the Lord gave the honor of being the first heralds of His Resurrection, are most often victims of violence. Whole families also suffer through women's suffering. Children, to the regret and shame of a world that hypocritically boasts about "democracy" and "human rights", are victims of crimes both in war and in peace. In addition to all that, we people are increasingly listless and apathetic, selfish and indifferent to the plight of others, to the suffering of our neighbors, so we can rightly ask ourselves: hasn't the abomination of desolation spoken of by the holy prophet Daniel already occurred? In other words, are we not already living in a so-called post-Christian world, but in an anti-Christian or, moreover, an anti-Christian world, a world without faith, morals and principles?
The man of today cries out: Lord, why have you forsaken us? But, to the same man today, God could retort with the question: Man, why did you leave another man? Where is your neighbor? Therefore, where am I, the Creator, the Savior and the only eternal and true Friend and Benefactor for you?
The Son of God Incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, Who suffered for many, for all, including those who hate Him, continues to suffer for us through all our sufferings. On our way of carrying the cross, we, the Serbian people, carrying our own cross, also carry the Cross of Christ. We also took it with us in the First World War when, in relation to the number of our compatriots, we were the biggest sufferers in the world. Our crusade continued in the Second World War, when, in the infamous and shameful Independent State of Croatia, camps were built even for our children, where the children died of hunger, cold, disease and abuse. Only in our country, in occupied Serbia, companies of students died in one day under the machine gun bullets of the German Nazis after school hours. We suffered in every hamlet, village, city. The truth of that suffering did not have to be confirmed by imposed amoral resolutions: they were witnessed by the suffering itself, without false witnesses in the form of direct descendants and indirect followers of the perpetrators of the actual genocide.
As shepherds of the literal flock of Christ, we regretfully remind everyone of the fact that the world we live in has forgotten the genocide of the Serbian people in the twentieth century, as well as in the centuries that preceded it. Every other hill in places where Serbs live is a kind of Golgotha.
We are comforted and reassured by the fact that we belong to a nation that in the years of peace, which came after the terrible times of death, followed the Gospel of the Risen Christ on which it was founded, forgave its debtors, and with members of other nations wanted and tried to build a better and common future. That is why today we strongly raise our voice and point out the absolute falsehood and the attempt of unprecedented historical revisionism, in which the Serbian people, victims of multiple genocides and ethnic cleansing, are being declared perpetrators of genocide through a simple inversion. We do not minimize the extent of the crimes in Srebrenica, but, as Orthodox Serbs, we do not keep silent about the crimes against the Serbian people in the vicinity of Srebrenica. Unfortunately, the proponents of the resolutions do not pay attention to those crimes in Serbian villages where whole families were oppressed and which happened continuously from 1992 to 1995. According to them, there is an exclusive right to sacrifice and pain due to it.
In our opinion, all innocent victims are innocent victims, be they Muslim or Croatian or Serbian, which is "wisely" kept silent by modern revisionists and enemies of historical truth, who, by imposing an exclusive right on pain and victims, leave all of us who live in these areas a stone stumbling blocks for the future.
The nature of a created being contains its connection with the world, with nature, i.e. with the land it lives on, which is its cradle, home and place of burial. Kosovo and Metohija are both our cradle and our home. In Kosovo and Metohija, in Old Serbia, there are our living and our dead. There are no dead. We are the Church of the living. We are a Christian people, the people of Calvary and Resurrection. We are a people of Christian identity expressed through endowments, which form the densest prayer wreath of temples in the world, the wreath we wove in Kosovo and Metohija. And it is the truth that stands on the mountain! This is where our past, present and future intertwine. Because, for us, this holy and christened land is not an ordinary territory, but the very holy land from which our "field of dry bones" will wake up and be resurrected. We should always pray and be with our suffering brothers and sisters in Kosovo and Metohija, who are https://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=TT&authuser=0 a living expression of hope, love, duration and search in the Crucified and To the resurrected Christ the Lord, with those who are the target of violence just because they are Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Serbs, because they are on their own. They live in so-called peace, in a "peace" in which there is no freedom, in a "peace" in which there is only fear and injustice. Again, as many times before, we are faced with adversity and pressure, but the words of the holy prophet Nahum are always in our minds: "Even if they are in force and there are many of them, they will again be cut off and pass away" (Nahum 1, 12). .
Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who offered Himself as a sacrifice, once for all, for the life of the world, in order to bear the sins of many, our Emmanuel, which means God is with us, has never forgotten or left us until now. On these holy days, we turn to him with a kneeling prayer to protect, save, pardon and preserve our Orthodox race from all plagues, injustices and violence. In that prayer meeting with Him, the Living God, the Risen One, we believe and know that every tragedy becomes a space of hope and meaning, while without Him, hopelessness and meaninglessness rule everywhere, no matter what clothes they wear. This represents one of the greatest challenges of our time, against which we Christians, as those who are companions of the Incarnate Meaning and Word, must stand firmly and unwaveringly, testifying that there is a real Way, Truth and Life - against false ones.
Therefore, we invite you, dear spiritual children, to tirelessly nurture, which means that we prayerfully and diligently express, the legitimate and natural need for national unity. We achieve this national unity under the omophorion of Saint Sava, in the Church of Christ, the Living God, whose Crucifixion and Resurrection the Serbian Orthodox people live and iconize in their journey through history. The Holy Church of Christ is the fundamental home of each of our earthly residences and knows no borders. Who can determine the boundaries of the Resurrection and the life on which our Church is based? It is the word of Christ: "I am the resurrection and the life." Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, he will live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die" (Jn. 11, 25-26). Therefore, let us make sure that we graciously and worshipfully immerse ourselves in the Mystery of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ, that we love one another as Christ loves us. "And when this corruptible is clothed in incorruptibility, and this mortal is clothed in immortality, then the word that is written will be fulfilled: Victory devours death (I Cor. 15, 54), and the Lord will wipe away the tears from every face, and the shame of his people will be abolished from all the earth" (Is. 25, 8).
Happy Easter!
Given at the Serbian Patriarchate in Belgrade, on Easter 2024
Your prayer books before the Risen Lord:
Archbishop of Peć, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlova
and Serbian Patriarch PORFIRIJE
Metropolitan CHRISOSTOM of DabroBosnia
Metropolitan JOANIKIJE of Montenegro and the coast
Bishop of Srem VASILIJE
Bishop JEFREM of Banja Luka
Bishop LUCIAN of Buda
Bishop NIKANOR of Banat
Bishop of New Gračanica-Midwestern America LONGIN
Canadian Bishop MITROFAN
Bishop IRINEJ of Bačka
Bishop British-Scandinavian DOSITEJ
Bishop of Žižići, JUSTIN
Bishop PAHOMIJE of Vranje
Bishop JOVAN of Šumadija
IGNATIJE, Bishop of Braničevo
Bishop FOTIJE of Zvornik-Tuzla
Bishop ATANASIJE of Mileševski
GREGORY, Bishop of Dusseldorf and Germany
Bishop THEODOSIJE of Raška-Prizren
Western American Bishop MAXIMUS
Bishop GERASIM of Upper Karlovac
Bishop Irenaeus of East America
Bishop DAVID of Kruševac
Bishop of Slavonia JOAN
Austrian-Swiss Bishop ANDREJ
Bishop SERGIJE of Bihać-Petrova
Bishop HILARION of Timoč
Bishop ARSENIJ of Niš
Bishop KYRILO of Buenos Aires and South-Central America
Bishop of the Australian-New Zealand Metropolitanate of SILUAN
Bishop NIKODIM of Dalmatia
Bishop of Osseo-Poland and Baranja CHERUVIM
Bishop of Valjevski ISYCHIJE
Bishop of Budimlja-Nikšić METHODIJE
Bishop DIMITRIJE of Zahum-Herzegovina
Bishop JEROTEJ of Sabac
Western European Bishop JUSTIN
Vicar Bishop STEFAN of Remesia
Vicar Bishop of Mohács DAMASKIN
Vicar Bishop SAVA of March
Vicar Bishop JOAN of Hum
Vicar Bishop ALEKSEJ of Hvostan
Vicar Bishop ILARION of Novi Brdo
Vicar Bishop of Jegar, NEKTARIJE
Vicar Bishop of Lipjan DOSITEJ
Vicar Bishop PETAR of Toplice
Retired Bishop of Zvornik-Tuzlan VASILIJE
Retired Canadian Bishop GEORGIA
Retired Central European Bishop KONSTANTIN
Retired Bishop of Slavonia SAVA
Retired Bishop FILARET of Milesev
Retired Bishop JOVAN of Nis
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