The historians’ relations and the Holy Tradition show that Saint Andrew is the first preacher of the Gospel with our Dacian – Romans forerunners, so that the Romanian Christianity has apostolic origin. Having been entrusted the evangelisation of the territories close to the Black Sea, the first called Apostle must have preached the Gospel both in the South of Bessarabia and in Scythia Minor (today’s Dobrudgea).
His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel showed in the speech delivered at the Joy Hill, on the feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle, the First Called, Protector of Romania, that our dignity of people with old apostolic age and faith becomes one more duty, namely to be missionaries of the apostolic faith:
“This special worship of Saint Andrew the Apostle shows us first of all our dignity of apostolic Church, a Church with the experience of sacrifice and resurrection throughout the centuries, a Christianity that consecrated and generated the culture of the new people appeared in the history, the Romanian people, made up of our Gets – Dacians and Romans forerunners, Thracians in the larger sense of the word, and so our dignity of people with apostolic old age and faith becomes one more duty. Apostolic means origin from the time of the apostles and that you convey the faith received from the Saints Apostles, but it also means missionary. The Apostle is an envoy, a man who has a mandate to accomplish, so that we, the Romanians, become missionaries through the very fact that we convey faith from generation to generation and because the Church accompanies her spiritual children outside the country’s boundaries too.
This is why, the Romanian Diaspora which has over 4 million of Romanian Orthodox faithful today is not a simple event economically motivated, but we must see, beyond this economical aspect, the work of God deeper than the circumstances’ motivation, namely to confess the Orthodox faith with no arrogance or fear, with calm, love and common sense among other peoples”.
The calendar of the Church of Constantinople speaks in detail about his preaching: “The lots entrusted Bithynia, Pontus Euxin (Black Sea) and Propontida (Marmara Sea) with the cities of Chalcedon and Byzantium, Macedonia, Thracian lands and region up to the Danube, Thessaly, Hellada (Central Greece), Ahaia and cities of Aminsos (Amisus), Trapezunt, Heracleea (of Pontus) and Amastis to Andrew, the First Called.”
