PASCHAL EPISTLE
AKAKIJE
By the Mercy of God
True Orthodox Bishop of Resava
and Shumadia
Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered!
Christ
is risen from the tomb, as He foretold, giving us eternal life and great
mercy. Truly, we have been deemed worthy
of a great mercy with the Resurrection of Christ. We were given forgiveness of sins, freedom
from enslavement to the devil, and the power to uproot our vices and
weaknesses. We were given immortality.
We can
already feel this great mercy now, for our bodies and souls are inexpressibly
strengthened by the Divine Mysteries.
The Lord fulfils our prayers which we offer to Him with faith. He grants us consolation in all of our
sorrows. He gives us every good thing
already in this life, for He is the vanquisher of death – the final and eternal Vanquisher.
With
all of our souls, we celebrate the all-joyous Resurrection of Christ this year
as well, but we cannot give ourselves to complete joy when great misfortunes
are presssing upon us: this year’s joy
of the Resurrection is more of a cry of hope.
With the Psalmist David we also should weep for the Serbian
Jerusalem:
“How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange
land?
If I forget thee, O Kosovo, let my right hand
be forgotten.
Let my tongue cleave to my throat if I remember
thee not,
If I prize thee not, Kosovo, as the head of
all my joys.”
We all
know that our Christ-named nation today is besieged by a great misfortune. Yet, in this darkness of great misfortune we
sense that we have not been deprived of the Lord’s holy help, for hope in the
help of Highest has not abandoned us:
the Lord Vanquisher truly promised that He is with us for all days until
the end of this age. We also know that
the Lord allows great misfortunes because of many human sins. Let us just observe this, not looking far
into the past: here, Passion Week of the
holy, saving sufferings of Christ which preceded this radiant feast of the
Lord’s Resurrection. In the middle of
this week, conscious-less and de-divinized Serbs, many of them, celebrated with
drink and unfasting food some kind of Comminist-pagan holiday, “the First of
May”?! On Great Wednesday, the day when
Judas betrayed Christ, during the time when fasting should reach its peak and
every Serb should piously keep vigil at the dreadful liturgical events of the
holy, saving sufferings of Christ?! This
is terrible. It could not be worse. This is truly a repetition of Judas’
betrayal. We Orthodox Christians, St.
Sava’s Serbs, in their own fatherland are truly as if in a strange land. How then can we sing the Lord’s songs with
full, untroubled joy? The great
misfortune which we are speaking of here can be summarized in a few sentences
which our glorious Patriarch-Martyr Barnabas spoke not long ago, in 1937, in
his New Year’s epistle during the time of the Concordat crisis:
“One of
our misfortunes is the degeneration of reason, the other the degeneration of of
morals. Intellectual and moral degeration
– these are dark, hail-bearing clouds which we are bringing from the old into
this new year. You will understand me
better when I tell you: our authorities
have lost their minds and their honor.
The fact that they have lost their mind is shown by their inconsistency
and their contradiction in the way they take care of this most precious state
and how they lead our martyric people.
Our biblical people have the proverb:
"When God wants to punish someone, first He takes away their mind."
Serbia's
current rulers, in the full view of all of us, without drop of shame in front
of the people or fear of God and Saint Sava, are giving over a part of the
centuries-old holy Serbian land: Kosovo
and Metohija. It is a fact that great
force has pressed upon us and occupied our land as the Ottomans once did. In
such a situation Serbia can only allow itself to involuntarily accept a
temporary occupation of a part of our country until conditions are made for the freeing of the occupied
territory. Thus should the matter be
presented to our people, along with the Western powers, which are pressing us
to voluntarily, with our consent give over something which does not belong to
us, that is, to our generation. Kosovo
and Metohija are Serbian, they belong to all Serbs, to the reposed as well as
those yet to be born. That is why no one of the Serbs has a right, under any
circumstances, to formalize the alienation of even one inch of Serbian land,
which is soaked with the blood of a multitude of holy martyrs. No one has the right to do this - not
politicians, nor the people with some kind of referendum - no one! If anyone dares to do such a thing, Lazarus'
curse will come upon him. Yes, that
terrible curse will come upon everyone who turns his back on the Kosovo
testament, which is inextricably woven into the ethos of the Serbian
people.
Unfortunately,
the official church, which was the only one who could have changed everything,
did not react adequately. The recent
public Invocation and Address to the head of state of Serbia by the Belgrade
Patriarchate, even if it was strong and concrete, because it was not
sufficiently ultimate, more resembled Pilate's washing of hands.
In such
situations the church and the hierarchs of the fatherland must react as they
did in 1937 when the Holy Hierarchical Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church
resolved to excommunicate all the ministers and members of the Orthodox faith
who voted for the Concordat. With this
excommunication went the clarification that not a single clergyman, for any
reason, for any clerical service or private business could enter the house of
the ministers and members in question. It
was ordered as well that this decision be read to the faithful after the next
liturgy in all the churches. Within the
clarification it was also recommended that not only the clergy should avoid
contact with the individuals under punishment, but that the faithful should
take up the same stance towards them.
Only such drastic measures could bear fruit then and now. The Concordat
was withdrawn, and the Hierarchical Council of the SPC ended the
excommunication from the church of the punished ministers and representatives.
As it
is well known, we Serbian True Orthodox Christians do not recognize the
Belgrade hierarchs as the canonical and Orthodox episcopacy of our fatherland’s
Serbian Church, due among other things to the lack of repentance for the past
cooperation with the godless Communist powers, and especially for the active
participation, in word and deed, in the pan-heresy of ecumenism and organic
membership in the World Council of Churches.
Despite this, we hoped that the Serbian Patriarchate, using its great
reputation and influence on the Serbian people, would finally react sharply, if
not in the question of the defence of the faith, at least in the question of
this unfortunate state treason. Our
hopes, however, were dashed. With its
stance of Pilate-like washing of the hands, the Serbian Patriarchate remained
Sergianistically servile to the state powers, once Communist, now democratic,
even in these fateful moments when the most vital interests the Serbian Church
and State are being threatened, when the centuries-old territories of Kosovo
and Metohija should be defended.
Aware of what misfortune our
people is in, and at the same time aware of our unenviable, illegal, ie
catacomb position in relation to the state, like a voice crying from the
wilderness, I call all Serbian brothers, honourable sons of St. Sava and
patriots, in the fatherland and abroad, to do all that is within their power
for all patriotic powers to be poured into one front to stand firmly beneath
the uniting battle flag for the preservation and defense of all that these
deformed, godless, communist, post-communist, and democratic times have
trampled upon and destroyed.
The conscious and pious part of
our Serbian people must at last unite and pronounce a great and sharp “NO!” to all the enemies of God and
national relics. Every Serb who gives
any kind of support to any kind of authory, political party or coalition which
accepts the giving up of Kosovo and Metohija must know that he will fall under
the terrible curse of Lazar:
“Whoever is Serbian and of Serbian
birth,
Of Serbian blood and generation,
And comes not to the battle of
Kosovo,
May
he never have the progeny that his heart desires,
Neither
son nor daughter!
May
nothing grow that his hand sows,
Neither
dark wine nor white wheat!
May
rust drop from him for every generation!”
As
bright rays of sun after a dark night dispel the darkness, so the Resurrected
Christ shatters not only the darkness of our souls, but the darkness of the
heavy clouds which have descended upon our much-suffering Christ-named
people.
With
the aspiration that as in the time of the honourable Prince Lazar, we all unite around the Kosovo
testament of the defence of the faith and fatherland, we hope and firmly
believe that the time will come when the enemies of the Church and our people
will be defeated:
Let God arise and let His enemies be
scattered!
From the
free Serbian mountains, 2013 A.D.
Your
daily intercessor in the Risen Lord,
+ Bishop Akakije
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