Metropolitan Ioan of Banat, to young people: Fight the white death and save your brothers

Metropolitan Ioan of Banat urges, in this year’s Easter Pastoral, to trust in the Father’s love, and advises young people to fight the white death.

It also urges to love and help the neighbor, as Jesus did on the cross, saving the robber who humbled himself in the last hour and with whom the Risen One appeared to the Father on the third day.

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Metropolitan Ioan of Banat, to young people: Fight the white death and save your brothers

“Christ overcame His death, but also our death. Death did not allow us to return to the Heavenly Father’s House.

Until the Resurrection of Christ, the Father was waiting sadly at the gates of Heaven for our return.

The sad God today rejoices with all the angelic bands seeing that His Son, even bearing the wounds of the thorns, is returning victorious ‘Home’ and He is not returning alone, but with a robber. (…). He does not bring him a saint, but the most fallen of earthlings: a robber. Great mystery and great sign of the Son’s love for all people who have fallen into the bondage of death!

Why didn’t Christ enter Heaven together with a saint, with a right?

He himself tells us: “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mark 2, 17). (…). God shows his love for us in that, for us, Christ died while we were still sinners” (Romans 5, 7-8).

Here is the boundless and impartial love of God! Christ fights the death of all, sacrifices himself for all, good and bad.

From here we learn that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for me and for you, he did not look at our face, but for Christ we are God’s treasure here on earth”, says Metropolitan Ioan of Banat, reports Agerpres.

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The Archbishop of Timisoara also addresses the young people, asking them that the indisputable truth of Christ’s Resurrection will carry him forward, over the ages, and that at His Second Coming, Christ will find Orthodox faith and good and loving Romanians in the land of the Carpathians God.

“Fight the white death, be victorious in front of it and save your brothers from its chains! Love God, country and family!”, says the high Orthodox prelate.

Metropolitan Ioan of Banat notes the fact that we are born to become sons of the eternal kingdom of the heavenly Father, and earthly death has meaning, as Christ also passes through it to the Resurrection.

With the Resurrection of Christ, no one should be afraid of death anymore, because “as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will rise”, Metropolitan John quotes the apostle Paul.

“What would the wind be if it didn’t blow and what would man be if he didn’t rise? From today don’t look for your place in the graves, but look for your place in the sky. The oak forgets in the spring that it is old. Why then some of us forget at the moment of death that we are eternal?

Man is neither young nor old, but eternal. And I say again: don’t be afraid of eternity, be afraid of sinning.

When does man die? When he doesn’t love anymore.

The mind of man is rooted upward. Do not uproot them, do not plant them in any field other than that of God in the praised Trinity.

Constantly let’s not stop the fight to forget, the fight to love and the fight to live in the spirit of the Gospel of Christ.

Time rests in man, then passes into eternity. For us, those who believe in the Resurrection, the past begins today.

So let us rejoice together with the company of angels, who, after having seen Christ on the Cross and in the tomb, now see Him triumphantly returning Home to the Father. Christ is Risen!” concludes the Easter Pastoral Ioan of Banat.