His Beatitude Daniel at the Cathedral of Curtea de Argeş

Romanian Orthodox Church

On the first Sunday after Pentecost, of All Saints, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church participated, together with His Eminence Calinic, Archbishop of Argeş and Muscel, in the Divine Liturgy celebrated at the Archiepiscopal Cathedral of Curtea de Argeş dedicated to “The Falling Asleep of the Mother of God”, and founded by Neagoe Basarab, informs„Ziarul Lumina”.

His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel showed in the sermon delivered that the Sunday of All Saints is full of spiritual meanings, both for the mystery of the Church and for the life of every Christian. “The Sunday of All Saints is celebrated in the Church as the first Sunday after the Descent of the Holy Spirit or the Pentecost, for three main reasons, namely for showing that the Holy Spirit came down in the world in order to deify the people, to implement the deification both in their life and in that of the Church. Secondly, this Sunday shows us that the Holy Spirit calls the crowd of various peoples to unity, the many various gifts that the Christians received at baptism and are called to make them fruitful through faith, effort, prayer and good deeds. One more reason is that the saints known to God are more than those known by people. This is why the Sunday of All Saints has a prophetic character too, of anticipation or foretelling the communion in the Kingdom of God, of foretasting the beauty and joy of the communion of All Saints, known and unknown”, said the Primate of our Church.

His Beatitude Daniel emphasised the relationship the Church established between the feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit and the deification of the people.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Adoption and Deification

Further on, His Beatitude pointed out the work of the Holy Spirit in our life, acting unseen not to create obligation: “If man, based on freedom, does not want to listen to the mysterious voice of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit does not force him to. He comes back, waits, insists, and comes back again. We can put out the Spirit due to our freedom, although we have been baptised in the Holy Spirit and water in the name of the Holy Trinity, through three attitudes: lack of faith, neglect or indifference, and no working or laziness. These are the states that put out the Spirit in us, because the Spirit respects our freedom, even the freedom to refuse God”.

The Sunday of All Saints shows us that the Holy Spirit is working in people till man reaches the stage of adoption and deification. “The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption, who prepares us for the resurrection of the soul from the sin, from death. Through the Holy Spirit we are adopted in God-the-Son, through faith in Christ, and become sons of God-the-Father according to the grace, the same as the Son of God is according to nature”, also showed His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel.

“The Sunday of All Saints is the Sunday of the Unity of All Saints”

His Beatitude has also shown that the Holy Spirit calls us to unity, because the Church is made up of various people, of saints of various ages, of various hosts of saints; “we celebrate all of them on the Sunday of All Saints, we have one or several saints every day, but now all these saints are celebrated together, so that the Church should teach us that the saints are not separated in heaven, even when they are in hosts. The Saints are together through the work of the Holy Spirit, conveyed to the people by the Holy Spirit. This Sunday shows the saints in unity, in communion, so that we may say that the Sunday of All Saints is the Sunday of the communion or of the unity of all saints”.

To end with, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel spoke about the various gifts that make up the Church, because when a faithful misses the Divine Liturgy with no reason whatsoever, “the Church misses one member of the mysterious body of Christ”.

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