[To our beloved clergy, to honored monks and beloved believers from the Holy Metropolitan Church of Basarabia;] Grace and joy from Almighty, and from Us – Episcopal blessing! „Now everything is filled with light: and the sky and the ones from beneath”. (Resurrection Service) [Beloved spiritual sons and daughters,] The light of the Holy Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ gets us all together this night. No night from the church or civil year is as full of divine light as this night, in any circumstance any of us may be in life, be it in the family, or in the institution we work at, or on other occasions, as a rule happy, our feelings do not have moments as the unspoken seconds of this night. Naturally the resurrection night lacks darkness as the Holy Fathers call it “the night full of light”. Verily, from the Lord’s Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Light everlasting shows itself near, shedding the Church of the Holy Resurrection and the souls of all the believers of the world. With profound fear, we hold this light in our hands, and we give it to one another as a personal testimony of this true God. Although we are here, anyway the light of Christ’s Resurrection has the value of the one received from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, as we keep it in our souls, too, not only in our hands. This testimony of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ fully should bear fruit in our hearts, thoughts and good deeds. This year of the Third Millennium, we should be duly thankful, as sons of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, instituted by Him in the world through the Holy Ghost, because we have received the same lights, the same Gospel and we sing together: “Christ has resurrected!” Yet, how sad and guilty are we, the clergy and believers of the Holy Metropolitan Church of Basarabia, protected by God, during these difficult times of discord and controversy, that is why, our common testimony “Christ has resurrected” should mean a godly call to reconciliation. He calls us with the same love to Him and His Church and says: “Don’t be afraid” (Mt. 28,5), “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” By His Resurrection from the dead, the Savior crushed the death, it does not have any more power over Christians. Christians do nor die. Christians but fall asleep in their bodies, as their soul passes into the life eternal. [My beloved brethren and sisters in God,] It is very important that history joins this godly work, time and space show its true value. Through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, a new way opened for mankind that nobody went on before Him. The Christianity brought the true spiritual force to European peoples, as well as to peoples from other parts of the world through the gift of immortality brought by the Resurrection of God born among mortals. Through the deeds you accomplished these days, through the Mystery of Confession and the Mystery of Communion, with the Body and Blood of Our Lord, you acquired spiritual integrity and immortality. The enemy, the evil, the sin do not have power over the Christian bearing God’s Body and Blood in the ark of his heart, thus making ourselves one with the Son of God. Because every Christian becomes son of God by grace, and the Savior becomes our elder brother, and consequently and naturally we all are brethren in Christ. The services on the days of the Passion Week, with their hymns unrivaled in the universal scriptures, show the value of God’s Resurrection impossible to contain with a human mind, this overwhelming harvest brought by Jesus Christ to be enjoyed by the entire humankind and by every person. [Beloved brethren and sisters,] It was 15 years last year since reviving the Basarabian Metropolitan Church and thus, with the hope of the joy of Christ’s Resurrection, we all, young and old, step into the spiritual and national progress in this blessed century. Especially our national history is depictive in this respect, as our people was christened about 2000 years ago through the sermons of Holy Apostle Andrew. This historic fact gives special dignity to our lasting as a people. Among the Christian peoples we are the first to have learnt the Way, the Truth and the Life, reverently preserving these eternal values. Thus we are an Orthodox Church of the Resurrection, of the Cross and of the Victory. That is why, the Cross and the Light, which we have received this night, are a component of our soul, of our Romanian people from Basarabia, who turned the suffering and the unlawfulness and all the vicissitudes of history into an occasion of spiritual endurance and of acquiring virtues, regardless of the difficulties we have passed through. This thing is very important for us, for the Orthodox. It’s not by chance that our autonomous Church from Basarabia has been conducted by important servicemen. My three big predecessors: Metropolitan Gurie Grosu, Bishop Efrem Enachescu and Bishop Dionisie Erhan were my guides in spirituality and I gathered values from their teachings, written when they were pastors of the Church in very difficult times. With the Resurrection light in my soul, I testify to the dignity of our Orthodox believers, priests, monks in monasteries, who proved to be good supporters and helpers in the life of the Church. Your presence at the Resurrection Service is also a God-pleasing sacrifice, as our ancestors fulfilled their missions of being Christians this way, too, joining efforts to accomplish national ideals. In 1918, the clergy and believers in Alba Iulia did have the idea of unity and resurrection of the nation, and this year it is 90 years from that big event. It is a gift from God that the language, the faith and the presence on this land should be the heritage of our hearts and souls. Through His Resurrection, Our Lord gives life to the ones in graves, and, all the more, to us, the ones alive. We, the sons of Basarabia’s Metropolitan Church, experience this truth. We shall all be glad that the Church loves the youths and wants these sprouts of the nation to contribute to the Church’s unity. The Holiday of Our Lord’s Resurrection spells joy on each of us; let embrace one another with the greeting: “Christ has resurrected”. How clearly and nicely true become the words of Holy Apostle Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” ( I Cor 15:14). This sermon of 2000 years ago was shed by the blood of countless martyrs of faith. The Golgothas have but hardened the faith centuries along, and this living and working faith is also seen today in the believers’ souls. Speaking about us – about our Christian-born people – we find the fruits of the Savior’s sacrifice and Resurrection scattered in centuries, we find them planted into our ancestral land – genuine beacons and cradles of culture and faith, we find them in the souls of all the martyrs dead in Communist prisons for their faith and nation. But, lo, the Resurrection calls us also now not to go away from the step Which is Christ: “the Way, the Truth and the Life”. These truths have been preserved, with God’s mercy, for 2000 years, by this people, who has built the houses of its wisdom for centuries – churches and monasteries – not on sand, but on rock -- genuine beacons of art and culture, envisioned in Savior Jesus Christ. That is why it is necessary that we continue this life and make of it, of our inner ark – our heart and soul – a ladder to heaven, a ladder of unity, a chest of divine love, overwhelming the humankind for thousands and thousands of years. The love of the Crucified Savior demands that we – through our deeds and faith -- get cured, so that Jesus’ rib shall not shed blood at each sin of ours. That is why history has a big value for us, the Orthodox Church is not being now impregnated into the history of our Romanian people, as it is in the people’s history since it was born as a Romanian and Christian people. The entire Christendom finds in the Orthodox faith ways of getting closer. It is a big gift from God that the Orthodoxy has preserved the canon through its sufferings, through sacrifices of the martyrs begotten by the history’s persecutions and Golgothas, as Chirst and His disciples left it for us. This is a perspective of perceiving the Resurrection and – especially – its fruit. Descending into the inner of us and testing our thoughts, we shall make the good deeds for individual and common life spring from the treasury of the good and strong heart. Jesus loves us all and waits to meet us every time. That is why, it is necessary to have Him in our souls, testifying to this big joy: [“Christ has resurrected!”] through our working faith: [“Verily He has resurrected!”]