“We believe that God is not only Good, but also Beautiful. Beauty is a dimension of the presence of the Glory of God in the human’s soul: light, kindness and permanent joy. This is why, in the Orthodox Church we pray especially for those who love the beauty of the House of God. Beauty is not only good behaviour when it refers to persons, but also the beauty of the adornment of the House of God with beautiful paintings, vestments, furniture, objects for worship beautifully made, all of them brought as respect, devotion, and appreciation”.
“The beautiful material presents are designed to express the light formed between the persons who respect each other. This is why the glory of God is the beauty of the eternal love of the Most Holy Trinity”.
“This inestimable glory and beauty of the Kingdom of God is eulogized in the books for worship and confessed by the Saints Apostles, as an inestimable beauty which brings about particular joy, because it is the beauty of the merciful love of God for humans, a self-offering love. The Persons of the Most Holy Trinity live one for another, in a mutual offering and inclusion, theologically called perichoresis”.
“The Saints are in this joy of the Most Holy Trinity and this is why we pray to the saints for salvation, sanctification of life, as well as for helping us progress during our earthly life, for the inestimable joy of the Kingdom of God, about which Saint Paul the Apostle said that “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”. It was this joy of the Holy Spirit that the saints of Christ lived and share with us too, if we try to reach it through ascetic effort, prayer, repentance, communion with the Holy Sacraments and doing good deeds”.
Fragment of the sermon of His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, delivered on the occasion of the blessing of the shrine with a particle of the relics of Saint Hierarch Nectarios from Aegina to be offered to Izbuc Monastery, Bihor county.
