In his pastoral letter for Holy Pascha, His Grace Bishop Sebastian of Slatina and Romanati advised the faithful to reject partisanship in the context of the current wars and to pray for all parties involved: “Let us raise the Cross instead of the sword and seek peace, not war; that peace that the Lord gave to His disciples after His Resurrection, as a provision of the Universal Resurrection!”

“In this world, increasingly transformed into a jungle of greed and death, our position, as Christians, cannot be other than that of the Church, which rejects any form of aggression and prays unceasingly for peace,” the bishop conveyed.

“When Christ commanded his disciples to conquer all the nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit…” (Mt. 28: 19), he did not ask them to do this with the sword or through who knows what military strategies, but through the Cross.”

Only the “unseen warfare” is blessed by the Church

“Let us be clear! In the Church, only one kind of war is blessed – the unseen warfare or that of the Cross -, so that only “those who have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24) are crowned with the laurels of victory,” the Bishop of Slatina and the Romanati underlined.

“Why is this warfare with ourselves so necessary? Because any passion that makes its nest in our heart is a herald of the killing war. Every passion is a murderous angel.”

“The seven deadly sins are so called not only because they kill our soul but also because, as soon as the opportunity arises, they pounce on our neighbour and kill him. It is not enough to run away from evil and war; we must also seek inner peace, as David the prophet says, Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it (Psalm 34: 13),” the hierarch added.

“Too many of us, however, ignoring the holy doctrine and forgetting the war with ourselves, have thrown ourselves into battle against one another. Instead of fighting the evil in ourselves, we were each quick to see the evil in the other.”

The heroism of service shown by Christ is opposed to the logic of tyranny

“The word of the Lord: The greatest among you will be your servant (Mt. 23: 11), however, overturns any logic of tyranny,” the bishop continued.

“His warning—“for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Mt. 26: 52)—still resonates today as a curse for all those who want wars, for all despots and insatiable politicians of the world, because, in divine logic, power does not mean aggression but inner strength capable of leading, through humility, to sacrifice and supreme sacrifice, according to the model of the Lord’s Sacrifice.”

“We must understand that, in God’s eyes, heroes are not those who die for the whims of disbelieved despots, temporarily perched at the top of secular power, but those who give their lives in the fight for eternity. That man’s greatest enemy is neither the neighbour, nor the stranger, nor even his aggressor of any kind, but man himself,” Bishop Sebastian explained.

The pastoral letter of the Bishop of Slatina and Romanati ended with a new call to the faithful to put away the weapons of the darkness of this age and put on the “armour of light” (Romans 13:12).

“Let us spend the celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection in peace, as a foretaste of our own resurrection, enjoying what is left good and beautiful in the world and in our being and nourishing our souls with His boundless love for us, love on which He paid for with His death on the Cross,” Bishop Sebastian concluded.

Photography courtesy of the Basilica.ro Archive

Follow us on Twitter: @BasilicaNews