In his pastoral letter on Holy Pascha 2020, the Metropolitan of Bessarabia urged Orthodox Christians to profess Christ’s Resurrection and to take advantage of the home isolation period to consolidate their family relationships, but also to do mercy, thus showing solidarity with those affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
‘It may be hard and uncomfortable for you to tell everyone that Christ is risen,’ Metropolitan Petru noted. But Christ’s Resurrection gives us hope. ‘Therefore, I urge everyone to confess Christ from your house. And even from a distance to proclaim to everyone that Christ is risen.’
The head of the autonomous Metropolis of Bessarabia recalled that the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church declared 2020 as a Solemn Year of the pastoral care of parents and children and a Commemorative Year of Romanian Orthodox Philanthropists.
The current situation allows us to meditate on both topics and to act both in family life and in the philanthropic field, he said.
Now ‘is the time allowed by God to consolidate relationships between children and faithful parents,’ the Metropolitan wrote.
He advised parents with children in school to spend more time with them and ‘to talk to them about God, because our society lately is heading (…) to a generation without the Creator’s presence in our children’s consciousness.’
Referring to young adults who come home after working abroad, Metropolitan Petru said that ‘they now have the opportunity and time given by God to stay closer to their parents, whom they had abandoned in search of better material life, and now, arriving home, they find them grey-haired, sad and old.’
‘Now, it is time for children to bring a smile and the joy of life in the hearts of their parents. Now is the time for parents to talk to their children about the risen Christ,’ the Metropolitan of Bessarabia underscored.
Given the coronavirus crisis, every Orthodox Christian is called to be a philanthropist, the metropolitan believes. ‘It is time for all Orthodox believers to show unity through acts of charity for the suffering, for those affected by this virus that has shadowed a part of our lives.’
His Eminence entrusted Christians that, although we will unusually spend this Easter, far from the church, Christ and eternal gladness can never be taken away from us.
‘And if even for a moment we have any doubt or thought of sorrow because we are not in the church, let us rejoice in this wonderful feast and remember the Saviour’s words to the Apostle Thomas after the Resurrection: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).’
‘Therefore, all those who believe in the risen Jesus are raised to the highest hypostasis of blessed people. And this is an eternal blessedness that will not be taken from us,’ Metropolitan Petru Păduraru wrote encouraging the believers from the Republic of Moldova.
Photography courtesy of Doxologia.ro
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