Friday, 6 May 2016, feast of the Healing Spring, His Grace Varlaam Ploieşteanul, Assistant Bishop to the Patriarch, celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Patriarchal Cathedral.
The Healing Spring feast is dedicated to the Mother of God. The synaxarion of the day says: on Friday, during the Bright Week, the consecration of the Church of Our Most Holy Mother of God is celebrated, the Life bearer Spring. The miracles beyond understanding performed by the Mother of God in this place of worship are also mentioned.
His Grace delivered a sermon in which he spoke about the history of this feast, mentioning that it dates as far back as the second half of the 5th century and remembers a miracle occurred at a spring close to Constantinople.
“Leon the Great, the future emperor, went out of the city of Jerusalem to the forest around Constantinople, where he met an old blind man wondering around and suffering from thirst. When feeling the presence of a person around he asked for some water. Leon went to look for a spring and then the Mother of God appeared in front of him and guided him to a spring where from he took some water and quenched the thirst of the old blind man, washed his face; suddenly, a great miracle occurred, namely the blind man was healed. This is why when Leon became the emperor of Byzantium he built a church above this Spring”, the hierarch said.
The Assistant Bishop to the Patriarch has also emphasised the spiritual meaning of the Bible text read today and showed that ever since the beginning of His activity the Saviour has explicitly said that He was the Son of God, and that the Temple of God in Jerusalem was the House of His Father, and a house of prayer where people should behave.
“But the Pharisees had a radical attitude to this gesture of the Saviour to re-impose good order and behaviour in the house of His Father, the temple of Solomon on the Sion Mount, and asked Him by what authority and legitimacy He did that. The Saviour answered them: “pull down this temple and I will raise it again in three days”. They were very surprised and ironical telling the Saviour that the temple was raised by their forerunners in 46 years and He would pull it down and build it again in three days, which was impossible”.
“But when Saint John the evangelist wrote the Gospel many years after the Resurrection he said that the Saviour referred to the Temple of His own body when He said that. The Gospel ends with the words: “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken”. Thus, it was only after the Resurrection of the Saviour from the dead, three years after they heard these words, that they understood the real meaning of the words, namely that Christ would be killed, His body would be nailed on the Cross and buried, but the third day He would be risen from the dead”, His Grace explained.
After the Divine Liturgy, the small blessing of the water was celebrated. The hierarch has also underlined the properties of the blessed water showing that the blessing of the water is designed to bring in our life more light, good health, blessing and help from God whom we invoked to come down through the descent and Work of the Holy Spirit upon this water and make it bearer of the blessings and gifts of God.
The liturgical answers at the Divine Liturgy were given by Nicolae Lungu choir of the Romanian Patriarchate.
Photo: Lumina newspaper
