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The Bishop of the Greek-Catholic Diocese of Cluj-Gherla, Claudiu Pop, refers, in his Pastoral of Easter, in 2022, as a year of grace, with a pandemic, with the war in Ukraine, with a tsunami of suffering and injustice.
"The Holy Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the central event of our faith, illuminates our lives in this year of grace 2022. I said 'year of grace' and probably a lot of people, even believers, might wonder how we can call this a year that started under the sign of the pandemic, a year in which the terrible war in Ukraine broke out, with atrocities that thwart us every day, with people who lost their homes, their families, lost their homes, their families, their loved ones and pretty much everything they had. With a tsunami of suffering and injustice, emerged from the depths of the evil ocean of the blinded consciousnesses, which beats us today at the door, how can this be a year 'of grace'?", shows Bishop Claudiu Pop, according to agerpres.ro.
He says that even in such years, the Resurrection of the Lord must be celebrated with an unspoken solemnity.
"The Church continually proposes this Holiday to us precisely to remind us of who we are, who Jesus Christ is to us, and what is the novelty of the Resurrection. (...) It seems to us, perhaps, that if we had lived in the time of the apostles, another would have been our perception. But were things really different then? Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day, but did the people of that time actually perceive something on the plane of changing society for the better? The Romans continued to rule the Holy Land, the Pharisees and the scribes continued to do what they had done until then, and most of the inhabitants continued their usual lives. Even His disciples found it difficult to believe that the Lord's Resurrection really changed the world. And yet, the seed of the Kingdom of Heaven sprang from the tomb, and the world really changed, but not as the apostles could expect," reads his Pastoral Letter of Passover.
In the context, he recalls that the Greek Catholic Church also went through "a terrible communist persecution and they all said she would disappear, but she did not disappear."
"If we look at the life of the Church after the persecution, we still see the traces of evil and suffering, we observe the thousands of difficulties and we can ask ourselves: did her resurrection in 1989 come with a real novelty, change, renewal? Or are we still trapped in a kind of time loop and entangled by the twisted paths of this world? If we are to look in the light of God's grace, we understand that things have really changed, but not as we might expect. Let's also think about our lives: in appearance they are the same as those of all the people on this earth. We have our joys and sorrows. We are not privileged in the sense that the world commonly understands this. We are not exempt from trials, injustice, and suffering. Precisely because of such recent sufferings, the Holy Father consecrated Ukraine, Russia and the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of the Holy Mother. Have you felt any changes? Have you seen something extraordinary happen? And yet, something essential happens when the Mother of God intervenes, but not as the world can expect," the Pastoral Letter of Passover reads.
