“The guards of the stone at the tomb entrance are all those who turn faith into ideology, spectacle and political image capital,” His Grace Bishop Ignatie of Husi stressed in this year’s Easter pastoral letter entitled “The Resurrection of the Lord and the false guards.”
The Bishop of Husi points to the contradictory elements in the immediate vicinity of the Resurrection of the Lord since the only ones who remembered the promise of the Saviour that He would rise on the third day were “precisely the priests and scribes.” In contrast, neither the apostles nor the Myrrh-bearing women remembered this promise.
The state in which the Holy Apostles found themselves was a reaction to the reality they had just experienced, Bishop Ignatie noted, and “the living memory of the atrocities of those who poured out all their wrath on the sinless One, on the One who is perfect Goodness.”
Because of this, the Bishop of Husi explained, none of them was aware or even dared “to imagine that Love can never be destroyed by the cunning of hatred. That Life can never be killed by the hatred of death.”
Therefore, both for the Holy Apostles and for us, the Resurrection of Christ is like “the lightning that cuts through the density of darkness and transforms it instantly into light. Or with an event that surprises us and leaves us speechless with wonder and joy.”
Making an analogy with the soldiers at the Saviour’s tomb, the Bishop of Husi pointed out that, like them, are all those who try to limit the Lord’s sacrifice and Resurrection.
“Guards of the stone at the tomb entrance are all those who believe that Christ, to save us, ‘comes down from the Cross to take vengeance on those who do not love Him,” the Bishop noted.
“The guards of the stone at the tomb entrance are those who understand Orthodoxy as a pretext for war and hatred against one of the same race or faith, whereas this faith is always on the side of love and peace.”
“The guards of the stone at the tomb entrance are all those who deliberately and ostentatiously kill joy, love and light in people’s hearts through envy, hatred and slander,” the Bishop of Husi added.
“The guards of the stone at the tomb entrance are all those who believe that the life of a people does not need roots and tradition, but that it can thrive through relativism and the permissive boycott of moral and national values.”
“The guards of the stone at the entrance of the tomb are all those who, according to the so lucid and true analysis of a Christian intellectual of Romania, refute by their lives the two paschal exhortations: ‘Do not be afraid’ (Matthew 28:5) and ‘Rejoice’ (Matthew 28:9), when ‘we fear everything we do not know, everything we know, everything we find out. We are afraid to rejoice. We are afraid to talk about patience and hope.”
Photography courtesy of the Diocese of Husi
Follow us on Twitter: @BasilicaNews
