(Delivered on Pascha 2010)
My beloved brethren, children of the Church, Pascha is today. Pascha is also this year. Our Bright day. The Resurrection. Our Feast Day. “The Pascha of the Greeks.” The true Pascha, the eternal one. The source of light, and splendor during difficult times for all the peoples of the earth and each of us individually as a person.
Today we celebrate the overcoming of evil, of unrighteousness, of hatred, of slavery to death. Today the darkness surrenders its place to the light and splendor of the human person. Today all the people have the capability to be illumined with the splendor of Pascha.
Today’s Paschal feast is an invitation and prompting for us to be illumined: the person, our life, the whole world, everyone, all peoples.
“It is the day of Resurrection, let us be illumined O people, Pascha, the Lord’s Pascha...”
My beloved brethren,
Today our Church, with this hymn we referred to, invites all the nations and all of us to be illumined. We should flee from the darkness and the gloom of our times, and we should go, we should enter into the Light of the Resurrection, the glory and splendor of mankind and the world. The Resurrected Christ our Lord shines and illumines everyone.
We have no other options, no other margins. Today, we do not have another option, another alternative.
How and where can we find today the joy and the splendor of the person, of our life? How can our face be illumined and brightened? Where can we be sustained? Towards where are we to go? There are so many dead ends, dilemmas, and problems of mankind today.
Many say, they propose and prefer to turn to money, wealth, gain, business ventures, the stock market and prosperity. They have undertaken them. This is the status quo today. The capital, money, is running, it is galloping. It goes everywhere with multinational Companies of contemporary “marketing”.
Notwithstanding, today’s world economic crisis affects everyone. It troubles, threatens and frightens everyone, even the wealthy, who live themselves with uncertainty and insecurity. And like the poor and unemployed of the world, who are threatened and suffer even more; they are brought to despair and find themselves in a difficult situation.
Others propose the easy-going life, comforts and fun times. The easy way. The easy life. All of us know that many people today travel along this path. Temporarily and for a period they are themselves content and see themselves as lucky.
However the boredom, the inactivity, the loneliness, the emptiness of life, the monotony, the illnesses, the daily monotony, the routine without creativity and effectiveness for life, it is an unbearable burden and weight; downright unfortunate.
There is also, besides the other things, contemporary technology. An important gift and valuable. Small and great are under the spell of the machine, the electronic medium, everything of a technological and mechanical nature. We have today a deification of machines. Dependence and enslavement are dangerous phenomena, a waste of humanity, and a change and an annulment of personal gifts and talents belonging to mankind.
These contemporary ways of life and trends of people today, they do not seem to be human ways. The are contemporary mediums of our own age, the features and characteristics of it. We revere them, but today’s man cannot expect illumination and personal joy from all these things.
My beloved brethren,
Our Church, which is not against our age and today’s achievements of mankind, invites us to other ways, another life. To the life of the illumination of the Resurrection, of blessed Resurrected life.
The living out of the Resurrection in our daily lives. A life of brilliant quality and humanity. A life without economic crisis’, insecurities and uncertainties. A true life, everlasting!
Together with our Church, I personally invite you today to this brilliant, resurrection life of our Resurrected Christ.
The invitation of the Church and my own, is primarily aimed at our children, the smallest and the greatest. To all their families. To our schools, our teachers, to the spiritual people of our Land. To the people of the countryside and the city. To the healthy and strong, as well as to the sick and weak, everyone. Let us be illumined, let us move forward, let us become enlightened with the light and splendor of the Resurrection.
