The Orthodox Church has never seen the struggle for the transformation of the world as a trivial matter, it states, among others, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in your message about her Resurrection.
According to the Ecumenical Patriarch, in Orthodox self-awareness there is no room for capitulation to evil, for indifference to the course of human affairs, on the contrary, the contribution to the transformation of history has a theological basis and an existential basis and unfolds without the risk of identifying the Church with the people.
“Belief in the Resurrection is the deepest and most acute expression of our freedom, or rather, its birth as a voluntary acceptance of the highest divine gift in favor of deification” emphasizes the Ecumenical Patriarch.
In detail, the Easter message from the Primate of the Prototrona Church is as follows:
“Venerable brother Hierarchs and dear children in the Lord,
Eudocia and grace of the God pandora, passing through the dolihon of the Holy and Great Lent and passing in darkness the Week of the Lord’s Passions, behold, we rejoice in the feast of His glorious Resurrection, through which we were redeemed from the hell of tyranny.
The glorious Resurrection of the dead of Christ the Savior is the co-resurrection of the universe of the gens of the dead and an anticipation of the end of everything and the fulfillment of the Divine Economy in the heavenly Kingdom. We participate in the eternal mystery of the Resurrection in the Church, sanctifying ourselves in its holy mysteries and experiencing Easter, “the doors of Paradise were opened”, not as a memory of a past event, but as a quintessence of ecclesiastical life, as the presence of Christ he is in our midst, closer to us than we are to ourselves. At Easter, Orthodox believers discover their true selves as they are in Christ, they join the movement of all things towards the End, “with gladness and gladness” (1 Pet. 1, 8), as “children of light… and children of the day” (1 Thessalonians 5, 5).
A central feature of Orthodox life is its resurrection pulse. The philosopher mistakenly called Orthodox spirituality “dark” and “autumn”. The developed sensitivity of the Orthodox is rightly praised by Westerners for the meaning and experiential depth of the Easter experience, without this faith forgetting, however, that the path to the Resurrection passes through the Cross. Orthodox spirituality does not know the utopianism of the Resurrection without the Cross, nor the pessimism of the Cross without the Resurrection.
Therefore, in the Orthodox experience, evil does not have the last word in history, while faith in the Resurrection acts as motivation for the fight against its presence in the world and its consequences, it acts as a powerful transformative force.
In Orthodox self-consciousness there is no room for capitulation to evil, for indifference to the course of human affairs. On the contrary, the contribution to the transformation of history has a theological and an existential basis and is developed without the risk of identifying the Church with the world. The orthodox believer is aware of the opposition between worldly reality and eschatological perfection and it is not possible to remain inactive in the face of negativity.
For this reason, the Orthodox Church has never seen the struggle to transform the world as an insignificant matter. The Easter faith saved the Church both from introversion and closure, and from secularization.
In Orthodox Easter all the mystery and existential richness of our piety is condensed. The “astonishment” of the Miróphoros, when, “as I entered the monument, I saw a young man… dressed in white clothes” (Mark 2:5), characterizes the magnitude and essence of the experience of faith as an experience of existential existence. shock. “Amazed” indicates that man is faced with a mystery, which deepens as he approaches it, as has been said, that our faith “is not a path from mystery to knowledge, but from knowledge to mystery as a denial of the mystery ”. It existentially shrinks man, respect opens the door to heaven.
Belief in the Resurrection is the deepest and clearest expression of our freedom, or rather, its birth as a voluntary acceptance of the highest divine gift because of deification. The Orthodox Church, as a “lived resurrection”, is the place of “true freedom”, which in the Christian life is the foundation, the path and the goal. The Resurrection of Christ is a gospel of freedom, a gift of freedom, and a guarantee of “common liberty” in the “eternal life” of the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
With these sentiments, venerable brothers and beloved children, filled with the full joy of participating in the “communion of all feasts”, receiving light from the endless light and glorifying Christ, who rose from the dead and resurrected, and remembered during the feast of this “day called and holy”, of all our brothers in situation, let us see the Lord “trampled by death” and the God of peace, as peacemaker of the world, illuminating our steps for every good and pleasant work, exclaiming the joyful hymn “Christ is risen”!
Fanarion, ‘Agion Pascha, vkd’
† That of Constantinople
fire to the Resurrected Christ
desire of all of you.”
Source: RES-MPE