In his Easter Pastoral Letter, the Romanian Bishop of Canada reminds us that the Church was established through prayer and communion after the disciples met Resurrected Christ. The hierarch also emphasizes the Eucharist as an act of communion with God.
“The encounter with the risen Christ constitutes the Church. Following the encounter with Him, the Holy Apostles return to Jerusalem and together with the Mother of God, the other women and disciples, form the first Church or community that gathers and prays in His name,” writes His Grace Ioan Casian.
“From the first moments of the establishment of the Church we see that prayer and communion are the essential elements of the Christian community.”
The faithful’s communion with God is made not only through prayer but also in a concrete way, by consuming Christ’s resurrected Body, a sinless body which is not prone to death, the hierarch emphasizes.
“What heals us from death and corruption is the life-giving, immortal, and incorruptible body of Christ. Only He acquired this capacity.”
“In paradise man’s immortality depended on the remaining in communion with God. After the coming of Christ, eternal life and righteousness depend on the same remaining in fellowship with God through Christ. Man could not heal himself from corruption and death without receiving the Body of the Immortal, that is, Christ present in the Holy Eucharist,” adds the Romanian Bishop of Canada.
“Only by participating in the communion with Christ present in the Holy Eucharist man can attain eternal life. Christ renews, restores, and redeems our lives through the resurrection. The Holy Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ, that is, the new humanity. It is the gift of God that man receives in the Divine Liturgy.”
“The Holy Eucharist becomes the medicine that heals us from sin and death. It strengthens the communion between believers and opens our lives to eternity,” His Grace continues.
“The purpose of our life here is to restore fellowship with God through the Holy Eucharist”, while „the Eucharist represents the eternal life lived in advance in the Church. Through Christ present in it we have the premises for the resurrection of all us at end of the world,” the hierarch further explains.
In the second part of the Pastoral Letter, Bishop Ioan Casian speaks of prayer as another way of communion with God, especially as year 2022 has been proclaimed in the Romanian Patriarchate as the Solemn Year of prayer in the Church’s life and the Christian’s life and the Commemorative Year of the Hesychast Saints Symeon the New Theologian, Gregory Palamas and Paisius (Velichkovsky) of Neamț.
“It is a year in which our attention must be directed to the enhancement of the prayer. It means to speak or to dialogue with God communally and in person. The two kinds of prayer – personal and communal – are complementary. They support and strengthen each other,” writes the Romanian hierarch of Canada.
“First, praying together makes us persist ‘in one mind’. This strengthens the unity of the Church as a community according to the model of the first disciples. Second, personal prayer shows us the irreducible quality and the invaluable price of the human person. It is a fine balance that the Church has tried to maintain over time between the community and the individual,” remarks the bishop.
Bishop Ioan Casian concludes his pastoral letter wishing that the joy of the resurrection of Christ spread in everyone’s life for its renewal and for eternal life.
Photo credit: Basilica.ro (archive)
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