Today, 10 May 2013, the Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of the Healing Spring. After the Divine Liturgy, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel celebrated the Lesser Blessing of the Waters at the Patriarchal Cathedral, on a podium specially arranged, assisted by a group of priests and deacons.
To end with the blessing of waters service, the Patriarch of Romania delivered a sermon in which he showed that the feast of the Healing Spring is dedicated both to Christ, our Saviour, and to the Mother of God.
“This feast has become popular in the entire Orthodoxy also because it is on the Bright Week, on this Friday, when we feel that the Christ Risen from the dead is the One Who heals our passions through His passions and sufferance and our sins and death through His Resurrection. It should be also mentioned that almost all Sundays between Easter and Ascension are healing Sundays: healing Thomas from his doubt, healing the women of myrrh of too much fear, healing the blind born man, healing the paralysed man. All these things show us that the power of Jesus Christ, our Lord, is a healing one. Even the name of Jesus means in Hebrew God saves, God heals. The name Saviour means healer, releaser of all evil, danger and helplessness. Thus, the first Healing Spring is Jesus Christ, the Saviour, as we hard at the prayer for blessing the waters: because You are the Healing Spring.
“So, Christ is the Healing Spring, but because the Mother of God is the human person closest to Jesus Christ, our Saviour, because He was born by her as Human, the Mother of God is a spring of healing too. Just because the same healing grace of Jesus Christ was bestowed over the Mother of God first of all, and then over the saints, lots of saints became healers too, moneyless doctors, who did not expect any reward for healing, so that we have the entire Church as a Spring of healings coming from Christ and bestowed over the Mother of God, and over the healing saints, and through them over the entire Church. It is important to see that this feast spread in our county a lot too, especially to monasteries, as well as to some city churches, as a church from Braila dedicated to this feast. Therefore, the Healing Spring refers to the Mother of God who receives the healing grace from Jesus Christ, the Saviour crucified and risen from the dead. This feast is a feast of gratitude too for all the good things and healings received from Christ through the prayers of the Mother of God, as well as a feast of hope. The water blessed today is used for healing the diseases of the body and soul too. This is why it should be taken with piety, faith, and devotion”, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel explained.
To end with, the faithful present could take blessed water both for their spiritual benefit and for that of their dear ones and received little icons of the Healing Spring on behalf of the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
