Paschal letter of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel

Robert Nicolae – www.basilica.ro– April-May 2016

Bucharest, Holy Easter 2016

“Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23).

Your Holiness/Beatitude,

Christ is Risen!

Jesus Christ our Saviour urges us to announce both to the faithful and to those outside the Church the truth that He passed through death and defeated it. The suffering body of Christ was not decayed in the grave because it was united with the Divinity of the Eternal Son and Christ’s soul was not kept in Hades also because it was united with His Divinity.

Thus, the wounds caused by the passions of the Crucified Christ were healed through Resurrection. Although they do not bleed any more, they are signs which confirm and communicate His humble love for the world stronger than sin and death, in order to show us that the sufferance and tribulations of the believer in his fight against sin in history are not forgotten by God in eternity. We are confident that the living relationship with the Risen Christ eternally alive is the source of salvation, as Saint Peter the Apostle teaches us when he says: “and even though you do not see Him (Christ) now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9).

In today’s society marked by instability and incertitude, by violent conflicts, disagreements and poverty, which force many of our fellow human beings leave their native places, the faith in the Crucified and Risen Christ helps us change concepts and juridical principles into life giving principles, materialized into acts of love, respect, forgiveness and help among people.

We pray God that the Holy Feast of the Resurrection of Christ may give you many years of life with peace, good health and salvation, with rich fruits in the missionary, pastoral and social work you unfold.

With brotherly love in Christ, the Risen Lord,

† DANIEL
Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church

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